True Blood Book Three Chapters 9-15

Chapter Nine
I had the shivery, shaky feeling that precedes walking into danger. This was the last night that Alcide could go to Club Dead: Terence had warned him away, very definitely. After this, I would be on my own, if I were even allowed into the club when Alcide did not escort me.
As I dressed, I found myself wishing I were going to an ordinary vampire bar, the kind where regular humans came to gape at the undead. Fangtasia, Eric's bar in Shreveport, was such a place. People would actually come through on tours, make an evening of wearing all black, maybe pouring on a little fake blood or inserting some cheesy fake fangs. They'd stare at the vampires carefully planted throughout the bar, and they'd thrill at their own daring. Every now and then, one of these tourists would step across the line that kept them safe. Maybe he'd make a pass at one of the vamps, or maybe he'd disrespect Chow, the bartender. Then, perhaps, that tourist would find out what he'd been messing with.
At a bar like Club Dead, all the cards were out on the table. Humans were the adornments, the frills. The supernaturals were the necessity.
I'd been excited this time the night before. Now I just felt a detached sort of determination, like I was on a powerful drug that divorced me from all my more ordinary emotions. I pulled on my hose and some pretty black garters that Arlene had given me for my birthday. I smiled as I thought of my red-haired friend and her incredible optimism about men, even after four marriages. Arlene would tell me to enjoy the minute, the second, with every bit of zest I could summon up. She would tell me I never knew what man I might meet, maybe tonight would be the magic night. Maybe wearing garters would change the course of my life, Arlene would tell me.
I can't say I exactly summoned up a smile, but I felt a little less grim as I pulled my dress over my head. It was the color of champagne. There wasn't much of it. I had on black heels and jet earrings, and I was trying to decide if my old coat would look too horrible, or if I should just freeze my butt off out of vanity. Looking at the very worn blue cloth coat, I sighed. I carried it into the living room over my arm. Alcide was ready, and he was standing in the middle of the room waiting for me. Just as I registered the fact that he was looking distinctly nervous, Alcide pulled one of the wrapped boxes out of the pile he'd collected during his morning shopping. He got that self-conscious look on his face, the one he'd been wearing when I'd returned to the apartment.
"I think I owe you this," he said. And handed me the large box.
"Oh, Alcide! You got me a present?" I know, I know, I was standing there holding the box. But you have to understand, this is not something that happens to me very often.
"Open it," he said gruffly.
I tossed the coat onto the nearest chair and I unwrapped the gift awkwardly—I wasn't used to my fake nails. After a little maneuvering, I opened the white cardboard box to find that Alcide had replaced my evening wrap. I pulled out the long rectangle slowly, savoring every moment. It was beautiful; a black velvet wrap with beading on the ends. I couldn't help but realize that it cost five times what I'd spent on the one that had been damaged.
I was speechless. That hardly ever happens to me. But I don't get too many presents, and I don't take them lightly. I wrapped the velvet around me, luxuriating in the feel of it. I rubbed my cheek against it.
"Thank you," I said, my voice wobbling.
"You're welcome," he said. "God, don't cry, Sookie. I meant you to be happy."
"I'm real happy," I said. "I'm not going to cry." I choked back the tears, and went to look at myself in the mirror in my bathroom. "Oh, it's beautiful," I said, my heart in my voice.
"Good, glad you like it," Alcide said brusquely. "I thought it was the least I could do." He arranged the wrap so that the material covered the red, scabbed marks on my left shoulder.
"You didn't owe me a thing," I said. "It's me that owes you." I could tell that my being serious worried Alcide just as much as my crying. "Come on," I said. "Let's go to Club Dead. We'll learn everything, tonight, and no one will get hurt."
Which just goes to prove I don't have second sight.
***
Alcide was wearing a different suit and I a different dress, but Josephine's seemed just the same. Deserted sidewalk, atmosphere of doom. It was even colder tonight, cold enough for me to see my breath on the air, cold enough to make me pathetically grateful for the warmth of the velvet wrap. Tonight, Alcide practically leaped from the truck to the cover of the awning, not even helping me down, and then stood under it waiting for me.
"Full moon," he explained tersely. "It'll be a tense night."
"I'm sorry," I said, feeling helpless. "This must be awfully hard on you." If he hadn't been obliged to accompany me, he could have been off bounding through the woods after deer and bunnies. He shrugged my apology off. "There'll always be tomorrow night," he said. "That's almost as good." But he was humming with tension.
Tonight I didn't jump quite so much when the truck rolled away, apparently on its own, and I didn't even quiver when Mr. Hob opened the door. I can't say the goblin looked pleased to see us, but I couldn't tell you what his ordinary facial expression really meant. So he could have been doing emotional cartwheels of joy, and I wouldn't have known it.
Somehow, I doubted he was that excited about my second appearance in his club. Or was he the owner? It was hard to imagine Mr. Hob naming a club "Josephine's."
"Dead Rotten Dog," maybe, or "Flaming Maggots," but not "Josephine's."
"We won't have trouble tonight," Mr. Hob told us grimly. His voice was bumpy and rusty, as if he didn't talk much, and didn't enjoy it when he did.
"It wasn't her fault," Alcide said.
"Nonetheless," Hob said, and left it at that. He probably felt he didn't need to say anything else, and he was right. The short, lumpy goblin jerked his head at a group of tables that had been pushed together. "The king is waiting for you."
The men stood as I reached the table. Russell Edgington and his special friend Talbot were facing the dance floor; and across from them were an older (well, he'd become undead when he was older) vampire, and a woman, who of course stayed seated. My gaze trailed over her, came back, and I shrieked with delight.
"Tara!"
My high school friend shrieked right back and jumped up. We gave each other a full frontal hug, rather than the slightly less enthusiastic half-hug that was our norm. We were both strangers in a strange land, here at Club Dead.
Tara, who is several inches taller than I am, has dark hair and eyes and olive skin. She was wearing a long-sleeved gold-and-bronze dress that shimmered as she moved, and she had on high, high heels. She had attained the height of her date.
Just as I was disengaging from the embrace and giving her a happy pat on the back, I realized that seeing Tara was the worst thing that could have happened. I went into her mind, and I saw that, sure enough, she was about to ask me why I was with someone who wasn't Bill.
"Come on, girlfriend, come to the ladies' with me for a second!" I said cheerfully, and she grabbed her purse, while giving her date a perfect smile, both promising and rueful. I gave Alcide a little wave, asked the other gentlemen to excuse us, and we walked briskly to the rest rooms, which
were off the passage leading to the back door. The ladies' room was empty. I pressed my back against the door to keep other females out. Tara was facing me, her face lit up with questions.
"Tara, please, don't say anything about Bill or anything about Bon Temps."
"You want to tell me why?"
"Just …" I tried to think of something reasonable, couldn't. "Tara, it'll cost me my life if you do."
She twitched, and gave me a steady stare. Who wouldn't? But Tara had been through a lot in her life, and she was a tough, if wounded, bird. "I'm so happy to see you here," she said. "It was lonely being in this crowd by myself. Who's your friend? What is he?"
I always forgot that other people couldn't tell. And sometimes I nearly forgot that other people didn't know about Weres and shifters. "He's a surveyor," I said. "Come on, I'll introduce you."
"Sorry we left so quickly," I said, smiling brightly at all the men. "I forgot my manners." I introduced Tara to Alcide, who looked appropriately appreciative. Then it was Tara's turn. "Sook, this is Franklin Mott."
"A pleasure to meet you," I said, and extended my hand before I realized my faux pas. Vampires don't shake hands. "I beg your pardon," I said hastily, and gave him a little wave instead. "Do you live here in Jackson, Mr. Mott?" I was determined not to embarrass Tara.
"Please call me Franklin," he said. He had a wonderful mellow voice with a light Italian accent. When he had died, he had probably been in his late fifties or early sixties; his hair and mustache were iron gray, and his face was lined. He looked vigorous and very masculine. "Yes, I do, but I own a business that has a franchise in Jackson, one in Ruston, and one in Vicksburg. I met Tara at a gathering in Ruston."
Gradually we progressed through the social do-si-do of getting seated, explaining to the men how Tara and I had attended high school together, and ordering drinks. All the vampires, of course, ordered synthetic blood, and Talbot, Tara, Alcide, and I got mixed drinks. I decided another champagne cocktail would be good. The waitress, a shifter, was moving in an odd, almost slinking manner, and she didn't seem inclined to talk much. The night of the full moon was making itself felt in all kinds of ways.
There were far fewer of the two-natured in the bar this night of the moon cycle. I was glad to see Debbie and her fiance were missing, and there were only a couple of the Were bikers. There were more vampires, and more humans. I wondered how the vampires of Jackson kept this bar a secret. Among the humans who came in with Supe dates, surely one or two were inclined to talk to a reporter or just tell a group of friends about the bar's existence?
I asked Alcide, and he said quietly, "The bar's spellbound. You wouldn't be able to tell anyone how to get here if you tried."
I'd have to experiment with that later, see if it worked. I wonder who did the spell casting, or whatever it was called. If I could believe in vampires and werewolves and shape-shifters, it was not too far a stretch to believe in witches.
I was sandwiched between Talbot and Alcide, so by way of making conversation I asked Talbot about secrecy. Talbot didn't seem averse to chatting with me, and Alcide and Franklin Mott had found they had acquaintances in common. Talbot had on too much cologne, but I didn't hold that against him. Talbot was a man in love, and furthermore, he was a man addicted to vampiric sex … the two states are not always combined. He was a ruthless, intelligent man who could not understand how his life had taken such an exotic turn. (He was a big broadcaster, too, which was why I could pick up so much of his life.)
He repeated Alcide's story about the spell on the bar. "But the way what happens here is kept a secret, that's different," Talbot said, as if he was considering a long answer and a short answer. I looked at his pleasant, handsome face and reminded myself that he knew Bill was being tortured, and he didn't care. I wished he would think about Bill again, so I could learn more; at least I would know if Bill was dead or alive. "Well, Miss Sookie, what goes on here is kept secret by terror and punishment."
Talbot said that with relish. He liked that. He liked that he had won the heart of Russell Edgington, a being who could kill easily, who deserved to be feared. "Any vampire or Were—in fact, any sort of supernatural creature, and you haven't seen quite a few of them, believe me—who brings in a human is responsible for that human's behavior. For example, if you were to leave here tonight and call a tabloid, it would be Alcide's bounden duty to track and kill you."
"I see." And indeed, I did. "What if Alcide couldn't bring himself to do that?"
"Then his life would be forfeit, and one of the bounty hunters would be commissioned to do the job."
Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea. "There are bounty hunters?" Alcide could have told me a lot more than he had; that was an unpleasant discovery. My voice may have been a little on the croaky side.
"Sure. The Weres who wear the motorcycle gear, in this area. In fact, they're asking questions around the bar tonight because …" His expression sharpened, became suspicious. "The man who was bothering you … did you see him again last night? After you left the bar?"
"No," I said, speaking the technical truth. I hadn't seen him again—last night. I knew what God thought about technical truths, but I also figured he expected me to save my own life. "Alcide and I, we went right back to the apartment. I was pretty upset." I cast my eyes down like a modest girl unused to approaches in bars, which was also a few steps away from the truth. (Though Sam keeps such incidents down to a minimum, and it was widely known I was crazy and therefore undesirable, I certainly had to put up with the occasional aggressive advance, as well as a certain amount of half-hearted passes from guys who got too drunk to care that I was supposed to be crazy.)
"You were sure plucky when it looked like there was going to be a fight," Talbot observed. Talbot was thinking that my courage last night didn't jibe with my demure demeanor this evening. Darn it, I'd overplayed my role.
"Plucky is the word for Sookie," Tara said. It was a welcome interruption. "When we danced together on stage, about a million years ago, she was the one who was brave, not me! I was shaking in my shoes."
Thank you, Tara.
"You danced?" asked Franklin Mott, his attention caught by the conversation.
"Oh, yes, and we won the talent contest," Tara told him. "What we didn't realize, until we graduated and had some experience in the world, was that our little routine was really, ah—"
"Suggestive," I said, calling a spade a spade. "We were the most innocent girls in our little high school, and there we were, with this dance routine we lifted straight off MTV."
"It took us years to understand why the principal was sweating so hard," Tara said, her smile just rascally enough to be charming. "As a matter of fact, let me go talk to the deejay right now." She sprang up and worked her way over to the vampire who'd set up his gear on the small stage. He bent over and listened intently, and then he nodded.
"Oh, no." I was going to be horribly embarrassed.
"What?" Alcide was amused.
"She's going to make us do it all over again."
Sure enough, Tara wiggled her way through the crowd to get back to me, and she was beaming. I had thought of twenty-five good reasons not to do what she wanted by the time she seized my hands and pulled me to my feet. But it was evident that the only way I could get out of this was to
go forward. Tara had her heart set on this exhibition, and Tara was my friend. The crowd made a space as Pat Benatar's "Love Is a Battlefield" began to play.
Unfortunately, I remembered every bump and grind, every hip thrust.
In our innocence, Tara and I had planned our routine almost like pairs figure skating, so we were touching (or very near) during the whole thing. Could it have looked more like some lesbian tease act performed in a stripper bar? Not much. Not that I'd ever been to a stripper bar, or a porno movie house; but I assume the rise of communal lust I felt in Josephine's that night was similar. I didn't like being the object of it—but yet, I discovered I felt a certain flood of power.
Bill had informed my body about good sex, and I was sure that now I danced like I knew about enjoying sex—and so did Tara. In a perverse way, we were having an "I am woman, hear me roar" moment. And, by golly, love sure was a battlefield. Benatar was right about that.
We had our sides to the audience, Tara gripping my waist, for the last few bars, and we pumped our hips in unison, and brought our hands sweeping to the floor. The music stopped. There was a tiny second of silence, and then a lot of applause and whistling.
The vampires thought of the blood flowing in our veins, I was sure from the hungry looks on their faces—especially those lower main lines on our inner thighs. And I could hear that the werewolves were imagining how good we would taste. So I was feeling quite edible as I made my way back to our table. Tara and I were patted and complimented along the way, and we received many invitations. I was halfway tempted to accept the dance offer of a curly-haired brunette vamp who was just about my size and cute as a bunny. But I just smiled and kept on going.
Franklin Mott was delighted. "Oh, you were so right," he said as he held Tara's chair for her. Alcide, I observed, remained seated and glowered at me, forcing Talbot to lean over and pull my chair out for me, an awkward and makeshift courtesy. (He did get a caress on the shoulder from Russell for his gesture.) "I can't believe you girls didn't get expelled," Talbot said, covering the awkward moment. I never would have pegged Alcide for a possessive jerk.
"We had no clue," Tara protested, laughing. "None. We couldn't understand what all the fuss was about."
"What bit your ass?" I asked Alcide, very quietly. But when I listened carefully, I could pick out the source of his dissatisfaction. He was resenting the fact that he had acknowledged to me that he still had Debbie in his heart, because otherwise he'd make a determined effort to share my bed tonight. He felt both guilty and angry about that, since it was the full moon—come to think of it, his time of the month. In a way.
"Not looking for your boyfriend too hard, are you?" he said coldly, in a nasty undertone.
It was like he'd thrown a bucket of cold water in my face. It was a shock, and it hurt terribly. Tears welled up in my eyes. It was also completely obvious to everyone at the table that he had said something to upset me.
Talbot, Russell, and Franklin all gave Alcide level looks practically laden with threat. Talbot's look was a weak echo of his lover's, so it could be disregarded, but Russell was the king, after all, and Franklin was apparently an influential vampire. Alcide recalled where he was, and with whom.
"Excuse me, Sookie, I was just feeling jealous," he said, loud enough for all at the table to hear. "That was really interesting."
"Interesting?" I said, as lightly as I could. I was pretty damn mad, myself. I ran my fingers through his hair as I leaned over to his chair. "Just interesting?" We smiled at each other quite falsely, but the others bought it. I felt like taking a handful of that black hair and giving it a good hard yank. He might not be a mind reader like me, but he could read that impulse loud and clear. Alcide had to force himself not to flinch.
Tara stepped in once again to ask Alcide what his occupation was—God bless her—and yet another awkward moment passed harmlessly by. I pushed my chair a little farther back from the circle around the table and let my mind roam. Alcide had been right about the fact that I needed to be at work, rather than amusing myself; but I didn't see how I could have refused Tara something she enjoyed so much.
A parting of the bodies crowding the little dance floor gave me a glimpse of Eric, leaning against the wall behind the small stage. His eyes were on me, and they were full of heat. There was someone who wasn't pissed off at me, someone who had taken our little routine in the spirit in which it was offered.
Eric looked quite nice in the suit and glasses. The glasses made him seem somehow less threatening, I decided, and turned my mind to business. Fewer Weres and humans made it easier to listen in to each one, easier to track the thread of thought back to its owner. I closed my eyes to help me concentrate, and almost immediately I caught a snatch of inner monologue that shook me up.
"Martyrdom," the man was thinking. I knew the thinker was a man, and that his thoughts were coming from the area behind me, the area right around the bar. My head began to turn, and I stopped myself. Looking wouldn't help, but it was an almost irresistible impulse. I looked down instead, so the movements of the other patrons wouldn't distract me.
People don't really think in complete sentences, of course. What I'm doing, when I spell out their thoughts, is translating.
"When I die, my name will be famous," he thought. "It's almost here. God, please let it not hurt. At least he's here with me … I hope the stake's sharp enough."
Oh, dammit. The next thing I knew I was on my feet, walking away from the table.
***
I was inching along, blocking the noise of the music and the voices so I could listen sharply to what was being said silently. It was like walking underwater. At the bar, slugging back a glass of synthetic blood, was a woman with a poof of teased hair. She was dressed in a tight-bodiced dress with a full skirt fluffing out around it. Her muscular arms and broad shoulders looked pretty strange with the outfit; but I'd never tell her so, nor would any sane person. This had to be Betty Joe Pickard, Russell Edgington's second in command. She had on white gloves and pumps, too. All she needed was a little hat with a half-veil, I decided. I was willing to bet Betty Joe had been a big fan of Mamie Eisenhower's.
And standing behind this formidable vampire, also facing the bar, were two male humans. One was tall, and oddly familiar. His gray-threaded brown hair was long, but neatly combed. It looked like a regular men's haircut, allowed to grow however it wanted to grow. The hairstyle looked odd with his suit. His shorter companion had rough black hair, tousled and flecked with gray. This second man wore a sports coat that maybe came off the rack from JC Penney on a sale day.
And inside that cheap coat, in a specially sewn pocket, he carried a stake.
Horribly enough, I hesitated. If I stopped him, I would be revealing my hidden talent, and to reveal that would be to unmask my identity. The consequences of this revelation would depend on what Edgington knew about me; he apparently knew Bill's girlfriend was a barmaid at Merlotte's in Bon Temps, but not her name. That's why I'd been free to introduce myself as Sookie Stackhouse. If Russell knew Bill's girlfriend was a telepath, and he discovered I was a telepath, who knew what would happen then?
Actually, I could make a good guess.
As I dithered, ashamed and frightened, the decision was made for me. The man with the black hair reached inside his coat and the fanaticism roiling in his head reached fever pitch. He pulled out the long sharpened piece of ash, and then a lot happened.
I yelled, "STAKE!" and lunged for the fanatic's arm, gripping it desperately with both my hands. The vampires and their humans whirled around looking for the threat, and the shifters and Weres wisely scattered to the walls to leave the floor free for the vampires. The tall man beat at me, his big hands pounding at my head and shoulders, and his dark-haired companion kept twisting his arm, trying to free it from my grasp. He heaved from side to side to throw me off.
Somehow, in the melee, my eyes met those of the taller man, and we recognized each other. He was G. Steve Newlin, former leader of the Brotherhood of the Sun, a militant anti-vampire organization whose Dallas branch had more or less bit the dust after I'd paid it a visit. He was going to tell them who I was, I just knew it, but I had to pay attention to what the man with the stake was doing. I was staggering around on my heels, trying to keep my feet, when the assassin finally had a stroke of brilliance and transferred the stake from his pinned right hand to his free left.
With a final punch to my back, Steve Newlin dashed for the exit, and I caught a flash of creatures bounding in pursuit. I heard lots of yowling and tweeting, and then the black-haired man threw back his left arm and plunged the stake into my waist on my right side.
I let go of his arm then, and stared down at what he'd done to me. I looked back up into his eyes for a long moment, reading nothing there but a horror to mirror my own. Then Betty Joe Pickard swung back her gloved fist and hit him twice—boom-boom. The first blow snapped his neck. The second shattered his skull. I could hear the bones break.
And then he went down to the floor, and since my legs were tangled with his, I went down, too. I landed flat on my back.
I lay looking up at the ceiling of the bar, at the fan that was rotating solemnly above my head. I wondered why the fan was on in the middle of winter. I saw a hawk fly across the ceiling, narrowly avoiding the fan blades. A wolf came to my side and licked my face and whined, but turned and dashed away. Tara was screaming. I was not. I was so cold.
With my right hand, I covered the spot where the stake entered my body. I didn't want to see it, and I was scared I'd look down. I could feel the growing wetness around the wound.
"Call nine-one-one!" Tara yelled as she landed on her knees beside me. The bartender and Betty Joe exchanged a look over her head. I understood.
"Tara," I said, and it came out like a croak. "Honey, all the shifters are changing. It's full moon. The police can't come in here, and they'll come if anyone calls nine-one-one."
The shifter part just didn't seem to register with Tara, who didn't know such things were possible. "The vampires are not gonna let you die," Tara said confidently. "You just saved one of them!"
I wasn't so sure about that. I saw Franklin Mott's face above Tara. He was looking at me, and I could read his expression.
"Tara," I whispered, "you have to get out of here. This is getting crazy, and if there's any chance the police are coming, you can't be here."
Franklin Mott nodded in approval.
"I'm not going to leave you until you have help," Tara said, her voice full of determination. Bless her heart.
The crowd around me consisted of vampires. One of them was Eric. I could not decipher his face.
"The tall blond will help me," I told Tara, my voice barely a rasp. I pointed a finger at Eric. I didn't look at him for fear I'd read rejection in his eyes. If Eric wouldn't help me, I suspected I would lie here and die on this polished wood floor in a vampire bar in Jackson, Mississippi.
My brother, Jason, would be so pissed off.
Tara had met Eric in Bon Temps, but their introduction had been on a very stressful night. She didn't seem to identify the tall blond she'd met that night with the tall blond she saw tonight, wearing glasses and a suit and with his hair pulled back strictly into a braid.
"Please help Sookie," she said to him directly, as Franklin Mott almost yanked her to her feet.
"This young man will be glad to help your friend," Mott said. He gave Eric a sharp look that told Eric he damn well better agree.
"Of course. I'm a good friend of Alcide's," Eric said, lying without a blink.
He took Tara's place by my side, and I could tell after he was on his knees that he caught the smell of my blood. His face went even whiter, and his bones stood out starkly under his skin. His eyes blazed.
"You don't know how hard it is," he whispered to me, "not to bend over and lick."
"If you do, everyone else will," I said. "And they won't just lick, they'll bite." There was a German shepherd staring at me with luminous yellow eyes, just past my feet.
"That's the only thing stopping me."
"Who are you?" asked Russell Edgington. He was giving Eric a careful once-over. Russell was standing to my other side, and he bent over both of us. I had been loomed over enough, I can tell you that, but I was in no position to do a damn thing about it.
"I'm a friend of Alcide's," Eric repeated. "He invited me here tonight to meet his new girlfriend. My name is Leif."
Russell could look down at Eric, since Eric was kneeling, and his golden brown eyes bored into Eric's blue ones. "Alcide doesn't hang with many vampires," Russell said.
"I'm one of the few."
"We have to get this young lady out of here," Russell said.
The snarling a few feet away increased in intensity. There appeared to be a knot of animals gathered around something on the floor.
"Take that out of here!" roared Mr. Hob. "Out the back door! You know the rules!"
Two of the vampires lifted the corpse, for that was what the Weres and shifters were squabbling over, and carried it out the back door, followed by all the animals. So much for the black-haired fanatic.
Just this afternoon Alcide and I had disposed of a corpse. We'd never thought of just bringing it down to the club, laying it in the alley. Of course, this one was fresh.
"… maybe has nicked a kidney," Eric was saying. I had been unconscious, or at least somewhere else, for a few moments.
I was sweating heavily, and the pain was excruciating. I felt a flash of chagrin when I realized I was sweating all over my dress. But possibly the big bloody hole had already ruined the dress anyway, huh?
"We'll take her to my place," Russell said, and if I hadn't been sure I was very badly hurt, I might have laughed. "The limo's on its way. I'm sure a familiar face would make her more comfortable, don't you agree?"
What I thought was, Russell didn't want to get his suit nasty picking me up. And Talbot probably couldn't lug me. Though the small vampire with curly black hair was still there, and still smiling, I would be awful bulky for him …
And I lost some more time.
"Alcide turned into a wolf and chased after the assassin's companion," Eric was telling me, though I didn't remember asking. I started to tell Eric who the companion was, and then I realized that I'd better not. "Leif," I muttered, trying to commit the name to memory. "Leif. I guess my garters are showing. Does that mean … ?"
"Yes, Sookie?"
… and I was out again. Then I was aware I was moving, and I realized that Eric was carrying me. Nothing had ever hurt so badly in my life, and I reflected, not for the first time, that I'd never even been in a hospital until I'd met Bill, and now I seemed to spend half my time battered or recovering from being battered. This was very significant and important.
A lynx padded out of the bar beside us. I looked down into the golden eyes. What a night this was turning out to be for Jackson. I hoped all the good people had decided to stay home tonight.
And then we were in the limo. My head was resting on Eric's thigh, and in the seat across from us sat Talbot, Russell, and the small curly-haired vampire. As we stopped at a light, a bison lumbered by.
"Lucky no one's out in downtown Jackson on a weekend night in December," Talbot was remarking, and Eric laughed.
We drove for what seemed like some time. Eric smoothed my skirt over my legs, and brushed my hair out of my face. I looked up at him, and …
"… did she know what he was going to do?" Talbot was asking.
"She saw him pull the stake out, she said," Eric said mendaciously. "She was going to the bar to get another drink."
"Lucky for Betty Joe," Russell said in his smooth Southern drawl. "I guess she's still hunting the one that got away."
Then we pulled up into a driveway and stopped at a gate. A bearded vampire came up and peered in the window, looking at all the occupants carefully. He was far more alert than the indifferent guard at Alcide's apartment building. I heard an electronic hum, and the gate opened. We went up a driveway (I could hear the gravel crunching) and then we swung around in front of a mansion. It was lit up like a birthday cake, and as Eric carefully extracted me from the limo, I could see we were under a porte cochere that was as fancy as all get-out. Even the carport had columns. I expected to see Vivian Leigh come down the steps.
I had a blank moment again, and then we were in the foyer. The pain seemed to be fading away, and its absence left me giddy.
As the master of this mansion, Russell's return was a big event, and when the inhabitants smelled fresh blood, they were doubly quick to come thronging. I felt like I'd landed in the middle of romance cover model contest. I had never seen so many cute men in one place in my life. But I
could tell they were not for me. Russell was like the gay vampire Hugh Hefner, and this was the Playboy Mansion, with an emphasis on the "boy."
"Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink," I said, and Eric laughed out loud. That was why I liked him, I thought rosily; he "got" me.
"Good, the shot's taking effect," said a white-haired man in a sports shirt and pleated trousers. He was human, and he might as well have had a stethoscope tattooed around his neck, he was so clearly a doctor. "Will you be needing me?"
"Why don't you stay for a while?" Russell suggested. "Josh will keep you company, I'm sure."
I didn't get to see what Josh looked like, because Eric was carrying me upstairs then.
"Rhett and Scarlet," I said.
"I don't understand," Eric told me.
"You haven't seen Gone with the Wind?" I was horrified. But then, why should a vampire Viking have seen that staple of the Southern mystique? But he'd read The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, which I had worked my way through in high school. "You'll have to watch it on video. Why am I acting so stupid? Why am I not scared?"
"That human doctor gave you a big dose of drugs," Eric said, smiling down at me. "Now I am carrying you to a bedroom so you can be healed."
"He's here," I told Eric.
His eyes flashed caution at me. "Russell, yes. But I'm afraid that Alcide made less than a stellar choice, Sookie. He raced off into the night after the other attacker. He should have stayed with you."
"Screw him," I said expansively.
"He wishes, especially after seeing you dance."
I wasn't feeling quite good enough to laugh, but it did cross my mind. "Giving me drugs maybe wasn't such a great idea," I told Eric. I had too many secrets to keep.
"I agree, but I am glad you're out of pain."
Then we were in a bedroom, and Eric was laying me on a gosh-to-goodness canopied four-poster. He took the opportunity to whisper, "Be careful," in my ear. And I tried to bore that thought into my drug-addled brain. I might blurt out the fact that I knew, beyond a doubt, that Bill was somewhere close to me.
Chapter Ten
There was quite a crowd in the bedroom, I noticed. Eric had gotten me situated on the bed, which was so high, I might need a stepstool to get down. But it would be convenient for the healing, I had heard Russell comment, and I was beginning to worry about what constituted "the healing." The last time I'd been involved in a vampire "healing," the treatment had been what you might call nontraditional.
"What's gonna happen?" I asked Eric, who was standing at the side of the bed on my left, non-wounded, side.
But it was the vampire who had taken his place to my right who answered. He had a long, horsy face, and his blond eyebrows and eyelashes were almost invisible against his pallor. His bare chest was hairless, too. He was wearing a pair of pants, which I suspected were vinyl. Even in the winter, they must be, um, unbreathing. I wouldn't like to peel those suckers off. This vamp's saving grace was his lovely straight pale hair, the color of white corn.
"Miss Stackhouse, this is Ray Don," Russell said.
"How de do." Good manners would make you welcome anywhere, my gran had always told me.
"Pleased to meet you," he responded correctly. He had been raised right, too, though no telling when that had been. "I'm not going to ask you how you're doing, cause I can see you got a great big hole in your side."
"Kind of ironic, isn't it, that it was the human that got staked," I said socially. I hoped I would see that doctor again, because I sure wanted to ask him what he'd given me. It was worth its weight in gold.
Ray Don gave me a dubious look, and I realized I'd just shot out of his comfort zone, conversationally. Maybe I could give Ray Don a Word of the Day calendar, like Arlene gave me every Christmas.
"I'll tell you what's going to happen, Sookie," Eric said. "You know, when we start to feed and our fangs come out, they release a little anticoagulant?"
"Um-hum."
"And when we are ready to finish feeding, the fangs release a little coagulant and a little trace of the, the—"
"Stuff that helps you all heal so fast?"
"Yes, exactly."
"So, Ray Don is going to what?"
"Ray Don, his nest mates say, has an extra supply of all these chemicals in his body. This is his talent."
Ray Don beamed at me. He was proud of that.
"So he will start the process on a volunteer, and when he has fed, he will begin cleaning your wound and healing it."
What Eric had left out of this narrative was that at some point during this process, the stake was going to have to come out, and that no drug in the world could keep that from hurting like a son of a bitch. I realized that in one of my few moments of clarity.
"Okay," I said. "Let's get the show on the road."
The volunteer turned out to be a thin blond human teenager, who was no taller than me and probably no wider in the shoulders. He seemed to be quite willing. Ray Don gave him a big kiss before he bit him, which I could have done without, since I'm not into public displays of carnal affection. (When I say "big," I don't mean a loud smack, but the intense, moaning, tonsil-sucking kind.) When that was done, to both their satisfactions, Blondie inclined his head to one side, and the taller Ray Don sank his fangs in. There was much cleaving, and much panting—and even to drug-addled me, Ray Don's vinyl pants didn't leave enough to the imagination.
Eric watched without apparent reaction. Vampires seem, as a whole, to be extremely tolerant of any sexual preference; I guess there aren't that many taboos when you've been alive a few hundred years.
When Ray Don drew back from Blondie and turned to face the bed, he had a bloody mouth. My euphoria evaporated as Eric instantly sat on the bed and pinned my shoulders. The Big Bad Thing was coming.
"Look at me," he demanded. "Look at me, Sookie."
I felt the bed indent, and I assumed Ray Don was kneeling beside it and leaning over to my wound.
There was a jar in the torn flesh of my side that jolted me down to the marrow of my bones. I felt the blood leave my face and felt hysteria bubbling up my throat like my blood was leaving the wound.
"Don't, Sookie! Look at me!" Eric said urgently.
I looked down to see that Ray Don had grabbed the stake.
Next he would …
I screamed over and over, until I didn't have the energy. I met Eric's eyes as I felt Ray Don's mouth sucking at the wound. Eric was holding my hands, and I was digging my nails into him like we were doing something else. He won't mind, I thought, as I realized I'd drawn blood.
And sure enough, he didn't. "Let go," he advised me, and I loosened my grip on his hands. "No, not of me," he said, smiling. "You can hold on to me as long as you want. Let go of the pain, Sookie. Let go. You need to drift away."
It was the first time I had relinquished my will to someone else. As I looked at him, it became easy, and I retreated from the suffering and uncertainty of this strange place.
The next thing I knew, I was awake. I was tucked in the bed, lying on my back, my formerly beautiful dress removed. I was still wearing my beige lace underwear, which was good. Eric was in the bed with me, which was not. He was really making a habit of this. He was lying on his side, his arm draped over me, one leg thrown over mine. His hair was tangled with my hair, and the strands were almost indistinguishable, the color was so similar. I contemplated that for a while, in a sort of misty, drifting state.
Eric was having downtime. He was in that absolutely immobile state into which vampires retreat when they have nothing else to do. It refreshes them, I think, reduces the wear and tear of the world that ceaselessly passes them by, year after year, full of war and famine and inventions that they must learn how to master, changing mores and conventions and styles that they must adopt in order to fit in. I pulled down the covers to check out my side. I was still in pain, but it was greatly reduced. There was a large circle of scar tissue on the site of the wound. It was hot and shiny and red and somehow glossy.
"It's much better," Eric said, and I gasped. I hadn't felt him rouse from his suspended animation.
Eric was wearing silk boxers. I would have figured him for a Jockey man.
"Thank you, Eric." I didn't care for how shaky I sounded, but an obligation is an obligation.
"For what?" His hand gently stroked my stomach.
"For standing by me in the club. For coming here with me. For not leaving me alone with all these people."
"How grateful are you?" he whispered, his mouth hovering over mine. His eyes were very alert now, and his gaze was boring into mine.
"That kind of ruins it, when you say something like that," I said, trying to keep my voice gentle. "You shouldn't want me to have sex with you just because I owe you."
"I don't really care why you have sex with me, as long as you do it," he said, equally gently. His mouth was on mine then. Try as I might to stay detached, I wasn't too successful. For one thing, Eric had had hundreds of years to practice his kissing technique, and he'd used them to good advantage. I snuck my hands up to his shoulders, and I am ashamed to say I responded. As sore and tired as my body was, it wanted what it wanted, and my mind and will were running far behind. Eric seemed to have six hands, and they were everywhere, encouraging my body to have its way. A finger slid under the elastic of my (minimal) panties, and glided right into me.
I made a noise, and it was not a noise of rejection. The finger began moving in a wonderful rhythm. Eric's mouth seemed bent on sucking my tongue down his throat. My hands were enjoying the smooth skin and the muscles that worked underneath it.
Then the window flew open, and Bubba crawled in.
"Miss Sookie! Mr. Eric! I tracked you down!" Bubba was proud.
"Oh, good for you, Bubba," Eric said, ending the kiss. I clamped my hand on his wrist, and pulled his hand away. He allowed me to do it. I am nowhere near as strong as the weakest vampire.
"Bubba, have you been here the whole time? Here in Jackson?" I asked, once I had some wits in my head. It was a good thing Bubba had come in, though Eric didn't think so.
"Mr. Eric told me to stick with you," Bubba said simply. He settled into a low chair tastefully upholstered in flowered material. He had a dark lock of hair falling over his forehead, and he was wearing a gold ring on every finger. "You get hurt bad at that club, Miss Sookie?"
"It's a lot better now," I said.
"I'm sorry I didn't do my job, but that little critter guarding the door wouldn't let me in. He didn't seem to know who I was, if you can believe that."
Since Bubba himself hardly remembered who he was, and had a real fit when he did, maybe it wasn't too surprising that a goblin wouldn't be current on American popular music.
"But I saw Mr. Eric carrying you out, so I followed you."
"Thank you, Bubba. That was real smart."
He smiled, in a slack and dim sort of way. "Miss Sookie, what you doing in bed with Mr. Eric if Bill is your boyfriend?"
"That's a real good question, Bubba," I said. I tried to sit up, but I couldn't do it. I made a little pain sound, and Eric cursed in another language.
"I am going to give her blood, Bubba," Eric said. "Let me tell you what I need you to do."
"Sure," Bubba said agreeably.
"Since you got over the wall and into the house without being caught, I need you to search this estate. We think Bill is here somewhere. They are keeping him prisoner. Don't try to free him. This is an order. Come back here and tell us when you have found him. If they see you, don't run. Just don't say anything. Nothing. Not about me, or Sookie, or Bill. Nothing more than, 'Hi, my name is Bubba.'"
"Hi, my name is Bubba."
"Right."
"Hi, my name is Bubba."
"Yes. That's fine. Now, you sneak, and you be quiet and invisible."
Bubba smiled at us. "Yes, Mr. Eric. But after that, I gotta go find me some food. I'm mighty hungry."
"Okay, Bubba. Go search now."
Bubba scrambled back out the window, which was on the second story. I wondered how he was going to get to the ground, but if he'd gotten into the window, I was sure he could get out of it.
"Sookie," Eric said, right in my ear. "We could have a long argument about you taking my blood, and I know everything you would say. But the fact is, dawn is coming. I don't know if you will be allowed to stay the day here or not. I will have to find shelter, here or elsewhere. I want you strong and able to defend yourself; at least able to move quickly."
"I know Bill is here," I said, after I'd thought this over for a moment. "And no matter what we almost just did—thank God for Bubba—I need to find Bill. The best time to get him out of here would be while all you vampires are asleep. Can he move at all during the daytime?"
"If he knows he is in great danger, he may be able to stagger," Eric said, slowly and thoughtfully. "Now I am even more sure you will need my blood, because you need strength. He will need to be covered thoroughly. You will need to take the blanket off this bed; it's thick. How will you get him out of here?"
"That's where you come in," I said. "After we do this blood thing, you need to go get me a car—a car with a great big trunk, like a Lincoln or a Caddy. And you need to get the keys to me. And you'll need to sleep somewhere else. You don't want to be here when they wake up and find their prisoner is gone." Eric's hand was resting quietly on my stomach, and we were still wrapped up together in the bedding. But the situation felt completely different.
"Sookie, where will you take him?"
"An underground place," I said uncertainly. "Hey, maybe Alcide's parking garage! That's better than being out in the open."
Eric sat up against the headboard. The silk boxers were royal blue. He spread his legs and I could see up the leg hole. Oh, Lord. I had to close my eyes. He laughed.
"Sit up with your back against my chest, Sookie. That will make you more comfortable."
He carefully eased me up against him, my back to his chest, and wrapped his arms around me. It was like leaning against a firm, cool, pillow. His right arm vanished, and I heard a little crunch sound. Then his wrist appeared in front of my face, blood running from the two wounds in his skin.
"This will cure you of everything," Eric said.
I hesitated, then derided myself for my foolish hesitation. I knew that the more of Eric's blood I had in me, the more he would know me. I knew that it would give him some kind of power over me. I knew that I would be stronger for a long time, and given how old Eric was, I would be very strong. I would heal, and I would feel wonderful. I would be more attractive. This was why vampires were preyed upon by Drainers, humans who worked in teams to capture vamps, chain them with silver, and drain their blood into vials, which sold for varying sums on the black market.
Two hundred dollars had been the going price for one vial last year; God knows what Eric's blood would bring, since he was so old. Proving that provenance would definitely be a problem for the Drainer. Draining was an extremely hazardous occupation, and it was also extremely illegal.
Eric was giving me a great gift.
I have never been what you would call squeamish, thank goodness. I closed my mouth over the little wounds, and I sucked.
Eric moaned, and I could tell quickly that he was once again pleased to be in such close contact. He began to move a little, and there wasn't a lot I could do about it. His left arm was keeping me firmly clamped against him, and his right arm was, after all, feeding me. It was still hard not to be icked out by the process. But Eric was definitely having a good time, and since with every pull I felt better, it was hard to argue with myself that this was a bad thing to be doing. I tried not to think, and I tried not to move myself in response. I remembered the time I'd taken Bill's blood because I needed extra strength, and I remembered Bill's reaction.
Eric pressed against me even harder, and suddenly he said, "Ohhhhh," and relaxed all over. I felt wetness against my back, and I took one deep, last draw. Eric groaned again, a deep and guttural sound, and his mouth trailed down the side of my neck.
"Don't bite me," I said. I was holding on to the remnants of my sanity with difficulty. What had excited me, I told myself, was my memory of Bill; his reaction when I'd bitten him, his intense arousal. Eric just happened to be here. I couldn't have sex with a vampire, especially Eric, just because I found him attractive—not when there would be such dire consequences. I was just too strung out to enumerate those consequences to myself. I was an adult, I told myself sternly; true adults don't have sex just because the other person is skilled and pretty.
Eric's fangs scraped my shoulder.
I launched myself out of that bed like a rocket. Intending to locate a bathroom, I flung open the door to find the short brunette vampire, the one with the curly hair, standing just outside, his left arm draped with clothes, his right raised to knock.
"Well, look at you," he said, smiling. And he certainly was looking. He burned his candle at both ends, apparently.
"You needed to talk to me?" I leaned against the door frame, doing my best to look wan and frail.
"Yes, after we cut your beautiful dress off, Russell figured you'd need some clothes. I happened to have these in my closet, and since we're the same height …"
"Oh," I said faintly. I'd never shared clothes with a guy. "Well, thank you so much. This is very kind of you." And it was. He'd brought some sweats (powder blue) and socks, and a silk bathrobe, and even some fresh panties. I didn't want to think about that too closely.
"You seem better," the small man said. His eyes were admiring, but not in any real personal way. Maybe I'd overestimated my charms.
"I am very shaky," I said quietly. "I was up because I was on my way to the bathroom."
Curly's brown eyes flared, and I could tell he was looking at Eric over my shoulder. This view definitely was more to his taste, and his smile became frankly inviting. "Leif, would you like to share my coffin today?" he asked, practically batting his eyelashes.
I didn't dare turn to look at Eric. There was a patch on my back that was still wet. I was suddenly disgusted with myself. I'd had thoughts about Alcide, and more than had thoughts about Eric. I was not pleased with my moral fiber. It was no excuse that I knew Bill had been unfaithful to me, or at least it wasn't much of an excuse. It was probably also not an excuse that being with Bill had accustomed me to regular, spectacular sex. Or not much of an excuse.
It was time to pull my moral socks up and behave myself. Just deciding that made me feel better.
"I have to run an errand for Sookie," Eric was telling the curly-haired vamp. "I am not sure I'll return before daybreak, but if I do, you can be sure I'll seek you out." Eric was flirting back. While all this repartee was flying around me, I pulled on the silk robe, which was black and pink and white, all flowers. It was really outstanding. Curly spared me a glance, and seemed more interested than he had when I'd just appeared in my undies.
"Yum," he said simply.
"Again, thanks," I said. "Could you tell me where the nearest bathroom is?"
He pointed down the hall to a half-open door.
"Excuse me," I said to both of them, and reminded myself to walk slowly and carefully, as if I was still in pain, as I made my way down the hall. Past the bathroom, by maybe two doors, I could see the head of the staircase. Okay, I knew the way out now. That was actually a comfort.
The bathroom was just a regular old bathroom. It was full of the stuff that usually clutters bathrooms: hair dryers, hot curlers, deodorant, shampoo, styling gel. Some makeup. Brushes and combs and razors.
Though the counter was clean and orderly, it was apparent several people shared the room. I was willing to bet Russell Edgington's personal bathroom looked nothing like this one. I found some bobby pins and secured my hair on top of my head, and I took the quickest shower on record. Since my hair had just been washed that morning, which now seemed years ago and took forever to dry besides, I was glad to skip it in favor of scrubbing my skin vigorously with the scented soap in the built-in dish. There were clean towels in the closet, which was a relief.
I was back in the bedroom within fifteen minutes. Curly was gone, Eric was dressed, and Bubba was back.
Eric did not say one word about the embarrassing incident that had taken place between us. He eyed the robe appreciatively but silently.
"Bubba has scoped out the territory, Sookie," Eric said, clearly quoting.
Bubba was smiling his slightly lopsided smile. He was pleased with himself. "Miss Sookie, I found Bill," he said triumphantly. "He ain't in such good shape, but he's alive."
I sank into a chair with no forewarning. I was just lucky it was behind me. My back was still straight—but all of a sudden, I was sitting instead of standing. It was one more strange sensation in a night full of them.
When I was able to think of anything else, I noticed vaguely that Eric's expression was a bewildering blend of things: pleasure, regret, anger, satisfaction. Bubba just looked happy.
"Where is he?" My voice didn't even sound like my own.
"There's a big building in back of here, like a four-car garage, but it's got apartments on top of it and a room to the side."
Russell liked to keep his help handy.
"Are there other buildings? Could I get confused?"
"There's a swimming pool, Miss Sookie, and it's got a little building right by it for people to change into their bathing suits. And there's a great big toolshed, I think that's what it's for, but it's separate from the garage."
Eric said, "What part of the garage is he being kept in?"
Bubba said, "The room to the right side. I think maybe the garage used to be stables, and the room is where they kept the saddles and stuff. It isn't too big."
"How many are in there with him?" Eric was asking some good questions. I could not get over Bubba's assurance that Bill was still alive and that I was very close to him.
"They got three in there right now, Mr. Eric, two men and one woman. All three are vamps. She's the one with the knife."
I shrank inside myself. "Knife," I said.
"Yes'm, she's cut him up pretty bad."
This was no time to falter. I'd been priding myself on my lack of squeamishness earlier. This was the moment to prove I'd been telling the truth to myself.
"He's held out this long," I said.
"He has," Eric agreed. "Sookie, I will go to get a car. I'll try to park it back there by the stables."
"Do you think they'll let you back in?"
"If I take Bernard with me."
"Bernard?"
"The little one." Eric smiled at me, and his own smile was a little lopsided.
"You mean … Oh, if you take Curly with you, they'll let you back in because he lives here?"
"Yes. But I may have to stay here. With him."
"You couldn't, ah, get out of it?"
"Maybe, maybe not. I don't want to be caught here, rising, when they discover Bill is gone, and you with him."
"Miss Sookie, they'll put werewolves to guarding him during the day."
We both looked at Bubba simultaneously.
"Those werewolves that have been on your trail? They'll be guarding Bill when the vamps go to sleep."
"But tonight is the full moon," I said. "They'll be worn out when it's their turn to take over. If they show up at all."
Eric looked at me with some surprise. "You're right, Sookie. This is the best opportunity we're going to get."
We talked it over some more; perhaps I could act very weak and hole up in the house, waiting for a human ally of Eric's to arrive from Shreveport. Eric said he would call the minute he got out of the immediate area, on his cell phone.
Eric said, "Maybe Alcide could lend a hand tomorrow morning."
I have to admit, I was tempted by the idea of calling him in again. Alcide was big and tough and competent, and something hidden and weak in me suggested that surely Alcide would be able to manage everything better than I would. But my conscience gave an enormous twinge. Alcide, I argued, could not be involved further. He'd done his job. He had to deal with these people in a business way, and it would ruin him if Russell figured out his part in the escape of Bill Compton.
We couldn't spend any more time in discussion, because it lacked only two hours until dawn. With a lot of details still loose, Eric went to find Curly—Bernard—and coyly request his company on an errand to obtain a car I assumed he intended to rent, and what car rental place would be open at this hour was a mystery to me, but Eric didn't seem to anticipate any trouble. I tried to dismiss my doubts from my mind. Bubba agreed to go over Russell's wall again, as he'd entered, and find a place to go to ground for the day. Only the fact that this was the night of the full moon had saved Bubba's life, Eric said, and I was willing to believe it. The vampire guarding the gate might be good, but he couldn't be everywhere.
My job was to play weak until day, when the vampires would retire, and then somehow get Bill out of the stable and into the trunk of the car Eric would provide. They'd have no reason to stop me from leaving.
"This is maybe the worst plan I have ever heard," Eric said.
"You got that right, but it's all we have."
"You'll do great, Miss Sookie," Bubba told me encouragingly.
That's what I needed, a positive attitude. "Thank you, Bubba," I said, trying to sound as grateful as I felt. I was energized by Eric's blood. I felt like my eyes were shooting sparks and my hair was floating around my head in a electric halo.
"Don't get too carried away," Eric advised. He reminded me that this was a common problem with people who ingested black-market vampire blood. They attempted crazy things since they felt so strong, so invincible, and sometimes they just weren't up to the attempted feat—like the guy who tried to fight a whole gang at once, or the woman who took on an oncoming train. I took a deep breath, trying to impress his warning on my brain. What I wanted to do was lean out the window and see if I could crawl up the wall to the roof. Wow, Eric's blood was awesome. That was a word I'd never used before, but it was accurate. I'd never realized what a difference there would be between taking Bill's blood and taking Eric's.
There was a knock at the door, and we all looked at it as if we could see through it.
In an amazingly short time, Bubba was out the window, Eric was sitting in the chair by the bed, and I was in the bed trying to look weak and shaky.
"Come in," Eric called in a hushed voice, as befitted the companion of someone recuperating from a terrible wound.
It was Curly—that is, Bernard. Bernard was wearing jeans and a dark red sweater, and he looked good enough to eat. I closed my eyes and gave myself a stern lecture. The blood infusion had made me very lively.
"How is she doing?" Bernard asked, almost whispering. "Her color is better."
"Still in pain, but healing, thanks to the generosity of your king."
"He was glad to do it," Bernard said courteously. "But he will be, ah, best pleased if she can leave on her own tomorrow morning. He is sure by then her boyfriend will be back at his apartment after he has enjoyed the moon tonight. I hope this doesn't seem too brusque?"
"No, I can understand his concern," Eric said, being polite right back.
Apparently, Russell was afraid that I would stay for several days, cashing in on my act of heroism. Russell, unused to having human female houseguests, wanted me to go back to Alcide, when he was sure Alcide would be able to see after me. Russell was a little uneasy about an unknown woman wandering around his compound during the day, when he and all his retinue would be in their deep sleep.
Russell was quite right to worry about this.
"Then I'll go get her a car and park it in the area to the rear of the house, and she can drive herself out tomorrow. If you can arrange that she'll have safe passage through the front gates—I assume they are guarded during the day?—I will have fulfilled my obligation to my friend Alcide."
"That sounds very reasonable," Bernard said, giving me a fraction of the smile he was aiming at Eric. I didn't return it. I closed my eyes wearily. "I'll leave word at the gate when we go. My car okay? It's just a little old egg-beater, but it'll get us to … where did you want to go?"
"I'll tell you when we're on the road. It's close to the home of a friend of mine. He knows a man who'll loan me the car for a day or two."
Well, he'd found a way to obtain a car without a paper trail. Good.
I felt movement to my left. Eric bent over me. I knew it was Eric, because his blood inside me informed me so. This was really scary, and this was why Bill had warned me against taking blood from any vampire other than him. Too late. Rock and a hard place.
He kissed my cheek in a chaste, friend-of-the-boyfriend way. "Sookie," he said very quietly. "Can you hear me?"
I nodded just a trifle.
"Good. Listen, I am going to get you a car. I'll leave the keys up here by the bed when I get back. In the morning, you need to drive out of here and back to Alcide's. Do you understand?"
I nodded again. "Bye," I said, trying to make my voice drowsy. "Thank you."
"My pleasure," he said, and I heard the edge in his voice. With an effort, I kept my face straight.
It's hard to credit, but I actually fell asleep after they left. Bubba had evidently obeyed, and gone over the fence to arrange shelter for the day. The mansion became very quiet as the night's revelries drew to a close. I supposed the werewolves were off having their last howl somewhere. As I was drifting off, I wondered how the other shape-shifters had fared. What did they do with their clothes? Tonight's drama at Club Dead had been a fluke; I was sure they had a normal procedure. I wondered where Alcide was. Maybe he had caught that son of a bitch Newlin.
I woke up when I heard the chink of keys.
"I'm back," Eric said. His voice was very quiet, and I had to open my eyes a little to make sure he was actually there. "It's a white Lincoln. I parked out by the garage; there wasn't room inside, which is a real pity. They wouldn't let me get any closer to confirm what Bubba said. Are you hearing me?"
I nodded.
"Good luck." Eric hesitated. "If I can disentangle myself, I'll meet you in the parking garage at first dark tonight. If you aren't there, I'll go back to Shreveport."
I opened my eyes. The room was dark, still; I could see Eric's skin glowing. Mine was, too. That scared the tar out of me. I had just stopped glowing from taking Bill's blood (in an emergency situation), when here came another crisis, and now I was shining like a disco ball. Life around vampires was just one continuous emergency, I decided.
"We'll talk later," Eric said ominously.
"Thanks for the car," I said.
Eric looked down at me. He seemed to have a hickey on his neck. I opened my mouth, and then shut it again. Better not to comment.
"I don't like having feelings," Eric said coldly, and he left.
That was a tough exit line to top.
Chapter Eleven
There was a line of light in the sky when I crept out of the mansion of the king of Mississippi. It was a little warmer this morning, and the sky was dark with not just night, but rain. I had a little roll of my belongings under my arm. Somehow my purse and my black velvet shawl had made it here to the mansion from the nightclub, and I had rolled my high heels in the shawl. The purse did have the key to Alcide's apartment in it, the one he'd loaned me, so I felt reassured that I could find shelter there if need be. I had the blanket from the bed folded neatly under my other arm. I'd made the bed up, so its loss would not be obvious for a little while.
What Bernard had not loaned me was a jacket. When I'd snuck out, I'd snagged a dark blue quilted jacket that had been hanging on the banister. I felt very guilty. I'd never stolen anything before. Now I had taken the blanket and the jacket. My conscience was protesting vigorously.
When I considered what I might have to do to get out of this compound, taking a jacket and a blanket seemed pretty mild. I told my conscience to shut up.
As I crept through the cavernous kitchen and opened the back door, my feet were sliding around in the elastic-sided slippers Bernard had included in the bundle of clothes he'd brought to my room. The socks and slippers were better than teetering in the heels, by a long shot.
I hadn't seen anyone so far. I seemed to have hit the magic time. Almost all the vampires were securely in their coffins, or beds, or in the ground, or whatever the heck they did during the day. Almost all the Were creatures, of whatever persuasion, were not back from their last night's binge or were already sleeping it off. But I was vibrating with tension, because at any moment this luck might run out.
Behind the mansion, there was indeed a smallish swimming pool, covered for the winter by a huge black tarp. It had weighted edges that extended far beyond the actual perimeter of the pool. The tiny pool house was completely dark. I moved silently down a pathway created with uneven flagstones, and after I passed through a gap in a dense hedge, I found myself in a paved area. With my enhanced vision, I was able to see instantly that I had found the courtyard in front of the former stables. It was a large edifice sided with white clapboards, and the second story (where Bubba had spotted apartments) had gable-style windows. Though his was the fanciest garage I had ever seen, the bays for cars did not have doors, but open archways. I could count four vehicles parked inside, from the limo to a Jeep. And there, on the right, instead of a fifth archway, there was a solid wall, and in it, a door.
Bill, I thought. Bill. My heart was pounding now. With an overwhelming sense of relief, I spotted the Lincoln parked close to the door. I turned the key in the driver's door, and it clicked open. When I opened the door, the dome light came on, but there didn't seem to be anyone here to see it. I tucked my little bundle of belongings on the passenger seat, and I eased the driver's door almost shut. I found a little switch and turned off the dome light. I took a precious minute to look at the dashboard, though I was so excited and terrified, it was hard to focus. Then I went to the rear of the vehicle and unlocked the trunk. It was just huge—but not clean, like the interior. I had the idea that Eric had gathered up all the large contents and tossed them in the trash, leaving the bottom littered with cigarette rolling papers, plastic bags, and spots of white powder on the floor. Hmmm. Well, okay. That couldn't be too important. Eric had stuck in two bottles of blood, and I moved them over to one side. The trunk was dirty, yes, but clear of anything that would cause Bill discomfort.
I took a deep breath, and clutched the blanket to my chest. Wrapped in its folds was the stake that had hurt me so badly. It was the only weapon I had, and despite its grisly appearance (it was still stained with my blood and a little tissue), I had retrieved it from the wastebasket and brought it with me. After all, I knew for sure it could cause damage.
The sky was a shade lighter, but when I felt raindrops on my face, I felt confident the darkness would last a little longer. I skulked my way to the garage. Creeping around surely looked suspicious, but I simply could not make myself stride purposefully over to the door. The gravel made silence almost impossible, but still I tried to step lightly.
I put my ear to the door, listened with all my enhanced ability. I was picking up nothing. At least I knew there was no human inside. Turning the knob slowly, easing it back into position after I pushed, I stepped into the room.
The floor was wooden, and covered with stains. The smell was awful. I knew immediately that Russell had used this room for torture before. Bill was in the center of the room, lashed to a straight-back chair by silver chains.
After the confused emotions and unfamiliar surroundings of the past few days, I felt like the world suddenly came into focus.
Everything was clear. Here was Bill. I would save him.
And after I'd had a good look at him in the light of the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, I knew I would do anything to save him.
I had never imagined anything so bad.
There were burn marks under the silver chains, which were draped all around him. I knew that silver caused unremitting agony to a vampire, and my Bill was suffering that now. He had been burned with other things, and cut, cut more than he could heal. He had been starved, and he had been denied sleep. He was slumped over now, and I knew he was taking what respite he could while his tormenters were gone. His dark hair was matted with blood.
There were two doors leading out of the windowless room. One, to my right, led to a dormitory of sorts. I could see some beds through the open doorway. There was a man passed out on one, just sprawled across the cot fully clothed. One of the werewolves, back after his monthly toot. He was snoring, and there were dark smears around his mouth that I didn't want to look at more closely. I couldn't see the rest of the room, so I couldn't be sure if there were others; it would be smart to assume there were.
The door at the rear of the room led farther back into the garage, perhaps to the stairs going up to the apartments. I couldn't spare the time to investigate. I had a feeling of urgency, impelling me to get Bill out as fast as I could. I was trembly with the need to hurry. So far, I had encountered enormous luck. I couldn't count on its holding.
I took two steps closer to Bill.
I knew when he smelled me, realized it was me.
His head snapped up and his eyes blazed at me. A terrible hope shone on his filthy face. I held up a finger; I stepped quietly over to the open door to the dormitory, and gently, gently, slid it almost shut. Then I glided behind him, looking down at the chains. There were two small padlocks, like the ones you put on your locker at school, holding the chains together. "Key?" I breathed in Bill's ear. He had an unbroken finger, and that was the one he used to point at the door I'd come in by. Two keys hung on a nail by the door, quite high from the floor, and always in Bill's sight. Of course they'd think of that. I put the blanket and stake on the floor by Bill's feet. I crept across the stained floor, and reached up as far as I could strain. I couldn't reach the keys. A vampire who could float would be able to get them. I reminded myself I was strong, strong from Eric's blood.
There was a shelf on the wall that held interesting things like pokers and pincers. Pincers! I stood on my tiptoes and lifted them off the shelf, trying hard to keep my gorge from rising when I saw they were crusted with—oh, horrible stuff. I held them up, and they were very heavy, but I managed to clamp them on the keys, work them forward off the nail, and lower the pincers until I could take the keys from their pointed ends. I exhaled a giant sigh of relief, as silently as you can exhale. That hadn't been so hard.
In fact, that was the last easy thing I encountered. I began the horrible task of unwrapping Bill, while trying to keep the movement of the chains as silent as I could. It was oddly difficult to
unwind the shiny rope of links. In fact, they seemed to be sticking to Bill, whose whole body was rigid with tension.
Then I understood. He was trying not to scream out loud as the chains were pulled out of his charred flesh. My stomach lurched. I had to stop my task for a few precious seconds, and I had to inhale very carefully. If it was this hard for me to witness his agony, how much harder must it be for Bill to endure it?
I braced up my mental fortitude, and I began working again. My grandmother always told me women could do whatever they had to do, and once again, she was right.
There were literally yards of silver chain, and the careful unwinding took more time than I liked. Any time was more time than I liked. The danger lurked right over my shoulder. I was breathing disaster, in and out, with every breath. Bill was very weak, and struggling to stay awake now that the sun had risen. It helped that the day was so dark, but he would not be able to move much when the sun was high, no matter how dreary the day.
The last bit of chain slid to the floor.
"You have to stand up," I said in Bill's ear. "You just have to. I know it hurts. But I can't carry you." At least, I didn't think I could. "There's a big Lincoln outside, and the trunk is open. I'm putting you in the trunk, wrapped in this blanket, and we're driving out of here. Understand, babe?"
Bill's dark head moved a fraction of an inch.
Right then our luck ran out.
"Who the hell are you?" asked a heavily accented voice. Someone had come through the door at my back
Bill flinched under my hands. I whirled to face her, dipping to pick up the stake as I did so, and then she was on me.
I had talked myself into believing they were all in their coffins for the day, but this one was doing her best to kill me.
I would have been dead in a minute if she hadn't been as shocked as I was. I twisted my arm from her grasp and pivoted around Bill in his chair. Her fangs were all out, and she was snarling at me over Bill's head. She was a blond, like me, but her eyes were brown and her build was smaller; she was a tiny woman. She had dried blood on her hands, and I knew it was Bill's. A flame started up inside me. I could feel it flicker through my eyes.
"You must be his little human bitch whore," she said. "He was fucking me, all this time, you understand. The minute he saw me, he forgot about you, except for pity."
Well, Lorena wasn't elegant, but she knew where to sink the verbal knife. I batted the words aside, because she wanted to distract me. I shifted my grip on the stake to be ready, and she leaped across Bill to land on top of me.
As she moved, without a conscious decision I whipped up the stake and pointed it at an angle. As she came down on me, the sharp point went in her chest and out the other side. Then we were on the floor. I was still gripping the end of the stake, and she was holding herself off of me with her arms. She looked down at the wood in her chest, astonished. Then she looked in my eyes, her mouth agape, her fangs retracting. "No," she said. Her eyes went dull.
I used the stake to push her to my left side, and I scrambled up off the floor. I was panting, and my hands shook violently. She didn't move. The whole incident had been so swift and so quiet that it hardly felt real.
Bill's eyes went from the thing on the floor to me. His expression was unreadable. "Well," I told him, "I killed her ass."
Then I was on my knees beside her, trying not to vomit.
It took me more precious seconds to regain control of myself. I had a goal I had to meet. Her death would not do me a bit of good if I couldn't get Bill out of here before someone else came in. Since I had done something so horrible, I had to get something, some advantage out of it.
It would be a smart thing to conceal the body—which was beginning to shrivel—but that had to take second place to removing Bill. I wrapped the blanket around his shoulders as he sat slumped in the stained chair. I'd been afraid to look at his face since I'd done this thing.
"That was Lorena?" I whispered in Bill's ear, plagued by a sudden doubt. "She did this to you?"
He gave that tiny nod again.
Ding dong, the witch was dead.
After a pause, while I waited to feel something, the only thing I could think of was asking Bill why someone named Lorena would have a foreign accent. That was dumb, so I forgot about it.
"You got to wake up. You got to stay awake till I get you in the car, Bill." I was trying to keep a mental eye open for the Weres in the next room. One of them began snoring behind the closed door, and I felt the mental stir of another, one I hadn't been able to spot. I froze for several
seconds, before I could feel that mind settle into a sleep pattern again. I took a deep, deep breath and pulled a flap of blanket over Bill's head. Then I got his left arm draped around my neck, and I heaved. He came up out of the chair, and though he gave a ragged hiss of pain, he managed to shuffle to the door. I was more than half carrying him, so I was glad to stop there and grab the knob and twist it. Then I almost lost hold of him, since he was literally sleeping on his feet.
Only the danger that we would be caught was stimulating him enough to afford movement.
The door opened, and I checked to make sure the blanket, which happened to be fuzzy and yellow, completely covered his head. Bill moaned and went almost completely limp when he felt the sunlight, weak and watery as it was. I began talking to him under my breath, cursing him and challenging him to move, telling him I could keep him awake if that bitch Lorena could, telling him I would beat him up if he didn't make it to the car.
Finally, with a tremendous effort that left me trembling, I got Bill to the trunk of the car. I pushed it open. "Bill, just sit on the lip here," I told him, tugging at him until he was facing me and sitting on the edge of the trunk. But the life left him completely at that point, and he simply collapsed backward. As he folded into the space, he made a deep pain noise that tore at my heart, and then he was absolutely silent and limp. It was always terrifying to see Bill die like that. I wanted to shake him, scream at him, pound on his chest.
There was no point in any of that.
I made myself shove all the sticking-out bits—a leg, an arm—into the trunk with him, and then I closed it. I allowed myself the luxury of a moment of intense relief.
Standing in the dim daylight in the deserted courtyard, I conducted a brief inner debate. Should I attempt to hide Lorena's body? Would such an effort be worth the time and energy?
I changed my mind about six times in the course of thirty seconds. I finally decided that yeah, it might be worth it. If there was no body to see, the Weres might suppose that Lorena had taken Bill somewhere for a little extra torture session. And Russell and Betty Joe would be dead to the world and unavailable to give instructions. I had no illusions that Betty Joe would be grateful enough to me to spare me, if I should get caught right now. A somewhat quicker death would be the most I could hope for.
My decision reached, back into that awful bloodstained room I went. Misery had soaked into the walls, along with the stains. I wondered how many humans, Weres, and vampires had been held prisoner in this room. Gathering up the chains as silently as I could, I stuffed them in Lorena's blouse, so anyone checking out the room might assume they were still around Bill. I looked around to see if there was any more cleanup I needed to do. There was so much blood in the room already, Lorena's made no difference.
Time to get her out of there.
To keep her heels from dragging and making noise, I had to lift her onto my shoulder. I had never done such a thing, and the procedure was awkward. Lucky for me she was so small, and lucky I'd practiced blocking things out of my mind all these years. Otherwise, the way Lorena dangled, completely limp, and the way she was beginning to flake away, would have freaked me out. I gritted my teeth, to hold back the bubble of hysteria starting up my throat.
It was raining heavily as I carried the body to the pool. Without Eric's blood, I could never have lifted the weighted edge of the pool cover, but I managed it with one hand and pushed what was left of Lorena into the pool with one foot. I was aware at any second that someone could look out the windows at the back of the mansion and see me, realize what I was doing—but if any of the humans living in the house did so, they decided to keep silent.
I was beginning to feel overwhelmingly weary. I trudged back down the flagstone path through the hedge to the car. I leaned on it for a minute, just breathing, gathering myself. Then I got in the driver's seat, and turned the key in the ignition. The Lincoln was the biggest car I'd ever driven, and one of the most luxurious cars I'd ever been in, but just at the moment I could take no interest or pleasure in it. I buckled my seat belt, adjusted the mirror and the seat, and looked at the dashboard carefully. I was going to need the windshield wipers, of course. This car was a new one, and the lights came on automatically, so that was one less worry.
I took a deep breath. This was at least phase three of the rescue of Bill. It was scary how much of this had happened by sheer chance, but the best-laid plans never take every happenstance into account anyway. Not possible. Generally, my plans tended to be what I called roomy.
I swung the car around and drove out of the courtyard. The drive swept in a graceful curve and went across the front of the main building. For the first time, I saw the facade of the mansion. It was as beautiful—white painted siding, huge columns—as I had imagined. Russell had spent a pretty penny renovating the place.
The driveway wound through grounds that still looked manicured even in their winter brown state, but that long driveway was all too short. I could see the wall ahead of me. There was the checkpoint at the gate, and it was manned. I was sweating despite the cold.
I stopped just before the gate. There was a little white cubicle to one side, and it was glass from waist level up. It extended inside and outside the wall, so guards could check both incoming and outgoing vehicles. I hoped it was heated, for the sake of the two Weres on duty. Both of them were wearing their leathers and looking mighty grumpy. They'd had a hard night, no doubt about it. As I pulled to a stop, I resisted an almost overwhelming temptation to plow right through those
gates. One of the Weres came out. He was carrying a rifle, so it was a good thing I hadn't acted on that impulse.
"I guess Bernard told you all I'd be leaving this morning?" I said, after I'd rolled down my window. I attempted a smile.
"You the one who got staked last night?" My questioner was surly and stubbly, and he smelled like a wet dog.
"Yeah."
"How you feeling?"
"Better, thank you."
"You coming back for the crucifixion?"
Surely I hadn't heard him right. "Excuse me?" I asked faintly.
His companion, who'd come to stand in the hut's door, said, "Doug, shut up."
Doug glowered at his fellow Were, but he shrugged after the glower didn't have any effect. "Okay, you're cleared to go."
The gates opened, way too slowly to suit me. When they were wide, and the Weres had stepped back, I drove sedately through. I suddenly realized I had no idea which way to go, but it seemed correct to turn left, since I wanted to head back to Jackson. My subconscious was telling me we had turned right to enter the driveway the night before.
My subconscious was a big fat liar.
After five minutes, I was fairly positive I was lost, and the sun continued to rise, naturally, even through the mass of clouds. I couldn't remember how well the blanket covered Bill, and I wasn't sure how light-tight the trunk would be. After all, safe transportation of vampires was not something the carmakers would cover in their list of specs.
On the other hand, I told myself, the trunk would have to be waterproof—that was sure important—so light-proof couldn't be far behind. Nonetheless, it seemed vitally important to find a dark place to park the Lincoln for the remaining hours of the day. Though every impulse told me to drive hard and get as far away from the mansion as I could, just in case someone went checking for Bill and put two and two together, I pulled over to the side of the road and opened the glove compartment. God bless America! There was a map of Mississippi with an inset for Jackson.
Which would have helped if I'd had any idea where I was at the moment.
People making desperate escapes aren't supposed to get lost.
I took a few deep breaths. I pulled back out into the road and drove on until I saw a busy gas station. Though the Lincoln's tank was full (thank you, Eric) I pulled in and parked at one of the pumps. The car on the other side was a black Mercedes, and the woman pumping the gas was an intelligent-looking middle-aged woman dressed in casual, comfortable, nice clothes. As I got the windshield squeegee out of its vat of water, I said, "You wouldn't happen to know how to get back to I-20 from here, would you?"
"Oh, sure," she said. She smiled. She was the kind of person who just loves to help other people, and I was thanking my lucky stars I'd spotted her. "This is Madison, and Jackson is south of here. I-55 is maybe a mile over that way." She pointed west. "You take I-55 south, and you'll run right into I-20. Or, you could take …"
I was about to be overloaded with information. "Oh, that sounds perfect. Let me just do that, or I'll lose track."
"Sure, glad I could help."
"Oh, you surely did."
We beamed at each other, just two nice women. I had to fight an impulse to say, "There's a tortured vampire in my trunk," out of sheer giddiness. I had rescued Bill, and I was alive, and tonight we would be on our way back to Bon Temps. Life would be wonderfully trouble-free. Except, of course, for dealing with my unfaithful boyfriend, finding out if the werewolf's body we'd disposed of in Bon Temps had been found, waiting to hear the same about the werewolf who'd been stuffed in Alcide's closet, and waiting for the reaction of the queen of Louisiana to Bill's indiscretion with Lorena. His verbal indiscretion: I didn't think for one minute that she would care about his sexual activities.
Other than that, we were hunky-dory.
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," I told myself. That had been Gran's favorite Bible quotation. When I was about nine, I'd asked her to explain that to me, and she'd said, "Don't go looking for trouble; it's already looking for you."
Bearing that in mind, I cleared my mental decks. My next goal was simply to get back to Jackson and the shelter of the garage. I followed the instructions the kind woman had given me, and I had the relief of entering Jackson within a half hour.
I knew if I could find the state capitol, I could find Alcide's apartment building. I hadn't allowed for oneway streets, and I hadn't been paying awful close attention to directions when Alcide gave me my little tour of downtown Jackson. But there aren't that many five-story buildings in the whole state of Mississippi, even in the capital. After a tense period of cruising, I spotted it.
Now, I thought, all my troubles will be over. Isn't it dumb to think that? Ever?
I pulled into the area by the little guard cubicle, where you had to wait to be recognized while the guy flipped the switch, or punched the button, or whatever made the barrier lift up. I was terrified he might deny me entrance because I didn't have a special sticker, like Alcide did on his truck.
The man wasn't there. The cubicle was empty. Surely that was wrong? I frowned, wondering what to do. But here the guard came, in his heavy brown uniform, trudging up the ramp. When he saw I was waiting, he looked stricken, and hurried up to the car. I sighed. I would have to talk to him after all. I pushed the button that would lower my window.
"I'm sorry I was away from my post," he said instantly. "I had to, ah … personal needs."
I had a little leverage here.
"I had to go borrow me a car," I said. "Can I get a temporary sticker?" I looked at him in a way that clued him in to my mindset. That look said, "Don't hassle me about getting the sticker, and I won't say a word about you leaving your post."
"Yes, ma'am. That's apartment 504?"
"You have a wonderful memory," I said, and his seamed face flushed.
"Part of the job," he said nonchalantly, and handed me a laminated number that I stuck on the dashboard. "If you'll just hand that in when you leave for good, please? Or if you plan on staying, you'll have to fill out a form we can have on file, and we'll give you a sticker. Actually," he said, stumbling a little, embarrassed, "Mr. Herveaux will have to fill it out, as the property owner."
"Sure," I said. "No problem." I gave him a cheery wave, and he retreated to the cubicle to raise the barrier.
I drove into the dark parking garage, feeling that rush of relief that follows clearing a major hurdle.
Reaction set in. I was shaking all over when I took the keys out of the ignition. I thought I saw Alcide's pickup over a couple of rows, but I had parked as deeply in the garage as I could—in the darkest corner, away from all the other cars, as it happened. This was as far as I had planned. I had no idea what to do next. I hadn't really believed I would get this far. I leaned back in the comfortable seat just for a minute, to relax and stop shaking before I got out. I'd had the heater on full blast during my drive from the mansion, so it was toasty warm inside the car.
When I woke up, I'd been asleep for hours.
The car was cold, and I was colder, despite the stolen quilted jacket. I got out of the driver's seat stiffly, stretching and bending to relieve cramped joints.
Maybe I should check on Bill. He had gotten rolled around in the trunk, I was sure, and I needed to make sure he was covered.
Actually, I just wanted to see him again. My heart actually beat faster at the thought. I was a real idiot.
I checked my distance from the weak sunlight at the entrance; I was well away. And I had parked so the trunk opening was pointed away from that bit of sunlight.
Yielding to temptation, I stepped around to the back of the car. I turned the key in the lock, pulled it out and popped it in my jacket pocket, and watched as the lid rose.
In the dim garage, I couldn't see too well, and it was hard to make out even the fuzzy yellow blanket. Bill appeared to be pretty well concealed. I bent over a little more, so I could arrange a fold further over his head. I had only a second's warning, a scuff of a shoe against the concrete, and then I felt a forceful shove from behind.
I fell into the trunk on top of Bill.
An instant and extra shove brought my legs in, and the trunk slammed shut.
Now Bill and I were locked in the trunk of the Lincoln.
Chapter Twelve
Debbie. I figured it had been Debbie. After I got over my initial flood of panic, which lasted longer than I wanted to admit, I tried to relive the few seconds carefully. I'd caught a trace of brain pattern, enough to inform me that my attacker was a shifter. I figured it must have been Alcide's former girlfriend—his not-so-former girlfriend, apparently, since she was hanging around his garage.
Had she been waiting for me to return to Alcide since the night before? Or had she met up with him at some point during the craziness of the full moon? Debbie had been even more angered by my escorting Alcide than I could have imagined. Either she loved him, or she was extremely possessive.
Not that her motivation was any big concern right now. My big concern was air. For the first time, I felt lucky that Bill didn't breathe.
I made my own breath slow and even. No deep, panicky gasps, no thrashing. I made myself figure things out. Okay, I'd entered the trunk probably about, hmm, one p.m. Bill would wake around five, when it was getting dark. Maybe he'd sleep a little longer, because he'd been so exhausted—but no later than six-thirty, for sure. When he was awake, he'd be able to get us out of here. Or would he? He was very weak. He'd been terribly injured, and his injuries would take a while in healing, even for a vampire. He would need rest and blood before he'd be up to par. And he hadn't had any blood in a week. As that thought passed through my mind, I suddenly felt cold.
Cold all over.
Bill would be hungry. Really, really hungry. Crazy hungry.
And here I was—fast food.
Would he know who I was? Would he realize it was me, in time to stop?
It hurt even worse to think that he might not care enough anymore—care enough about me—to stop. He might just keep sucking and sucking, until I was drained dry. After all, he'd had an affair with Lorena. He'd seen me kill her, right in front of his eyes. Granted, she'd betrayed and tortured him, and that should have doused his ardor, right there. But aren't relationships crazy anyway?
Even my grandmother would have said, "Oh, shit."
Okay. I had stay calm. I had to breathe shallow and slow to save air. And I had to rearrange our bodies, so I could be more comfortable. I was relieved this was the biggest trunk I'd ever seen, because that made such a maneuver possible. Bill was limp—well, he was dead, of course. So I could sort of shove him without worrying too much about the consequences. The trunk was cold, too, and I tried to unwrap Bill a little bit so I could share the blanket.
The trunk was also quite dark. I could write the car designer a letter, and let him know I could vouch for its light-tightness, if that was how you'd put it. If I got out of here alive, that is. I felt the shape of the two bottles of blood. Maybe Bill would be content with that?
Suddenly, I remembered an article I'd read in a news magazine while I was waiting in the dentist's office. It was about a woman who'd been taken hostage and forced into the trunk of her own car, and she'd been campaigning ever since to have inside latches installed in trunks so any captive could release herself. I wondered if she'd influenced the people who made Lincolns. I felt all around the trunk, at least the parts I could reach, and I did feel a latch release, maybe; there was a place where wires were sticking into the trunk. But whatever handle they'd been attached to had been clipped off.
I tried pulling, I tried yanking to the left or right. Damn it, this just wasn't right. I almost went nuts, there in that trunk. The means of escape was in there with me, and I couldn't make it work. My fingertips went over and over the wires, but to no purpose.
The mechanism had been disabled.
I tried real hard to figure out how that could have happened. I am ashamed to confess, I wondered if somehow Eric knew I'd be shut in the trunk, and this was his way of saying, "That's what you get for preferring Bill." But I just couldn't believe that. Eric sure had some big blank moral blind spots, but I didn't think he'd do that to me. After all, he hadn't reached his stated goal of having me, which was the nicest way I could put it to myself.
Since I had nothing else to do but think, which didn't take up extra oxygen, as far as I knew, I considered the car's previous owner. It occurred to me that Eric's friend had pointed out a car that would be easy to steal; a car belonging to someone who was sure to be out late at night, someone who could afford a fine car, someone whose trunk would hold the litter of cigarette papers, powder, and Baggies.
Eric had liberated the Lincoln from a drug dealer, I was willing to bet. And that drug dealer had disabled the inner trunk release for reasons I didn't even want to think about too closely.
Oh, give me a break, I thought indignantly. (It was easy just then to forget the many breaks I'd had during the day.) Unless I got a final break, and got out of this trunk before Bill awoke, none of the others would exactly count.
It was a Sunday, and very close to Christmas, so the garage was silent. Maybe some people had gone home for the holidays, and the legislators had gone home to their constituency, and the other people were busy doing … Christmas, Sunday stuff. I heard one car leave while I lay there, and then I heard voices after a time; two people getting off the elevator. I screamed, and banged on the trunk lid, but the sound was swallowed up in the starting of a big engine. I quieted immediately, frightened of using more air than I could afford.
I'll tell you, time spent in the nearly pitch-black dark, in a confined space, waiting for something to happen—that's pretty awful time. I didn't have a watch on; I would have had to have one with those hands that light up, anyway. I never fell asleep, but I drifted into an odd state of suspension. This was mostly due to the cold, I expect. Even with the quilted jacket and the blanket, it was very cold in the trunk. Still, cold, unmoving, dark, silent. My mind drifted.
Then I was terrified.
Bill was moving. He stirred, made a pain noise. Then his body seemed to go tense. I knew he had smelled me.
"Bill," I said hoarsely, my lips almost too stiff with cold to move. "Bill, it's me, Sookie. Bill, are you okay? There's some bottled blood in here. Drink it now."
He struck.
In his hunger, he made no attempt to spare me anything, and it hurt like the six shades of hell.
"Bill, it's me," I said, starting to cry. "Bill, it's me. Don't do this, honey. Bill, it's Sookie. There's TrueBlood in here."
But he didn't stop. I kept talking, and he kept sucking, and I was becoming even colder, and very weak. His arms were clamping me to him, and struggling was no use, it would only excite him more. His leg was slung over my legs.
"Bill," I whispered, thinking it was already maybe too late. With the little strength I had left, I pinched his ear with the fingers of my right hand. "Please listen, Bill."
"Ow," he said. His voice sounded rough; his throat was sore. He had stopped taking blood. Now another need was on him, one closely related to feeding. His hands pulled down my sweatpants, and after a lot of fumbling and rearranging and contorting, he entered me with no preparation at all. I screamed, and he clapped a hand over my mouth. I was crying, sobbing, and my nose was all stopped up, and I needed to breathe through my mouth. All restraint left me and I began fighting
like a wildcat. I bit and scratched and kicked, not caring about the air supply, not caring that I would enrage him. I just had to have air.
After a few seconds, his hand fell away. And he stopped moving. I drew air in with a deep, shuddering gasp. I was crying in earnest, one sob after another.
"Sookie?" Bill said uncertainly. "Sookie?"
I couldn't answer.
"It's you," he said, his voice hoarse and wondering. "It's you. You were really there in that room?"
I tried to gather myself, but I felt very fuzzy and I was afraid I was going to faint. Finally, I was able to say, "Bill," in a whisper.
"It is you. Are you all right?"
"No," I said almost apologetically. After all, it was Bill who'd been held prisoner and tortured.
"Did I …" He paused, and seemed to brace himself. "Have I taken more blood than I should?"
I couldn't answer. I laid my head on his arm. It seemed too much trouble to speak.
"I seem to be having sex with you in a closet," Bill said in a subdued voice. "Did you, ah, volunteer?"
I turned my head from side to side, then let it loll on his arm again.
"Oh, no," he whispered. "Oh, no." He pulled out of me and fumbled around a lot for the second time. He was putting me back to rights; himself, too, I guess. His hands patted our surroundings. "Car trunk," he muttered.
"I need air," I said, in a voice almost too soft to hear.
"Why didn't you say so?" Bill punched a hole in the trunk. He was stronger. Good for him.
Cold air rushed in and I sucked it deep. Beautiful, beautiful oxygen.
"Where are we?" he asked, after a moment.
"Parking garage," I gasped. "Apartment building. Jackson." I was so weak, I just wanted to let go and float away.
"Why?"
I tried to gather enough energy to answer him. "Alcide lives here," I managed to mutter, eventually.
"Alcide who? What are we supposed to do now?"
"Eric's … coming. Drink the bottled blood."
"Sookie? Are you all right?"
I couldn't answer. If I could have, I might have said, "Why do you care? You were going to leave me anyway." I might have said, "I forgive you," though that doesn't seem real likely. Maybe I would have just told him that I'd missed him, and that his secret was still safe with me; faithful unto death, that was Sookie Stackhouse.
I heard him open a bottle.
As I was drifting off in a boat down a current that seemed to be moving ever faster, I realized that Bill had never revealed my name. I knew they had tried to find it out, to kidnap me and bring me to be tortured in front of him for extra leverage. And he hadn't told.
The trunk opened with a noise of tearing metal.
Eric stood outlined by the fluorescent lights of the garage. They'd come on when it got dark. "What are you two doing in here?" he asked.
But the current carried me away before I could answer.
***
"She's coming around," Eric observed. "Maybe that was enough blood." My head buzzed for a minute, went silent again.
"She really is," he was saying next, and my eyes flickered open to register three anxious male faces hovering above me: Eric's, Alcide's, and Bill's. Somehow, the sight made me want to laugh. So many men at home were scared of me, or didn't want to think about me, and here were the three men in the world who wanted to have sex with me, or who at least had thought about it seriously; all crowding around the bed. I giggled, actually giggled, for the first time in maybe ten years. "The Three Musketeers," I said.
"Is she hallucinating?" Eric asked.
"I think she's laughing at us," Alcide said. He didn't sound unhappy about that. He put an empty TrueBlood bottle on the vanity table behind him. There was a large pitcher beside it, and a glass.
Bill's cool fingers laced with mine. "Sookie," he said, in that quiet voice that always sent shivers down my spine. I tried to focus on his face. He was sitting on the bed to my right.
He looked better. The deepest cuts were scars on his face, and the bruises were fading.
"They said, was I coming back for the crucifixion?" I told him.
"Who said that to you?" He bent over me, his face intent, dark eyes wide.
"Guards at the gate."
"The guards at the gates of the mansion asked you if you were coming back for a crucifixion tonight? This night?"
"Yes."
"Whose?"
"Don't know."
"I would have expected you to say, 'Where am I? What happened to me?'" Eric said. "Not ask whose crucifixion would be taking place—perhaps is taking place," he corrected himself, glancing at the clock by the bed.
"Maybe they meant mine?" Bill looked a little stunned by the idea. "Maybe they decided to kill me tonight?"
"Or perhaps they caught the fanatic who tried to stake Betty Joe?" Eric suggested. "He would be a prime candidate for crucifixion."
I thought it over, as much as I was able to reason through the weariness that kept threatening to overwhelm me. "Not the picture I got," I whispered. My neck was very, very sore.
"You were able to read something from the Weres?" Eric asked.
I nodded. "I think they meant Bubba," I whispered, and everyone in the room froze.
"That cretin," Eric said savagely, after he'd had time to process that. "They caught him?"
"Think so." That was the impression I'd gotten.
"We'll have to retrieve him," Bill said. "If he's still alive."
It was very brave for Bill to say he would go back in that compound. I would never have said that, if I'd been him.
The silence that had fallen was distinctly uneasy.
"Eric?" Bill's dark eyebrows arched; he was waiting for a comment.
Eric looked royally angry. "I guess you are right. We have the responsibility of him. I can't believe his home state is willing to execute him! Where is their loyalty?"
"And you?" Bill's voice was considerably cooler as he asked Alcide.
Alcide's warmth filled the room. So did the confused tangle of his thoughts. He'd spent part of last night with Debbie, all right.
"I don't see how I can," Alcide said desperately. "My business, my father's, depends on my being able to come here often. And if I'm on the outs with Russell and his crew, that would be almost impossible. It's going to be difficult enough when they realize Sookie must be the one who stole their prisoner."
"And killed Lorena," I added.
Another pregnant silence.
Eric began to grin. "You offed Lorena?" He had a good grasp of the vernacular, for a very old vampire.
It was hard to interpret Bill's expression. "Sookie staked her," he said. "It was a fair kill."
"She killed Lorena in a fight?" Eric's grin grew even broader. He was as proud as if he'd heard his firstborn reciting Shakespeare.
"Very short fight," I said, not wanting to take any credit that was not due me. If you could term it credit.
"Sookie killed a vampire," Alcide said, as if that raised me in his evaluation, too. The two vampires in the room scowled.
Alcide poured and handed me a big glass of water. I drank it, slowly and painfully. I felt appreciably better after a minute or two.
"Back to the original subject," Eric said, giving me another meaningful look to show me he had more to say about the killing of Lorena. "If Sookie has not been pegged as having helped Bill escape, she is the best choice to get us back on the grounds without setting off alarms. They might not be expecting her, but they won't turn her away, either, I'm sure. Especially if she says she has a message for Russell from the queen of Louisiana, or if she says she has something she wants to return to Russell …" He shrugged, as if to say surely we could make up a good story.
I didn't want to go back in there. I thought of poor Bubba, and tried to worry about his fate—which he might have already met—but I was just too weak to worry about it.
"Flag of truce?" I suggested. I cleared my throat. "Do the vampires have such a thing?"
Eric looked thoughtful. "Of course, then I'd have to explain who I am," he said.
Happiness had made Alcide a lot easier to read. He was thinking about how soon he could call Debbie.
I opened my mouth, reconsidered, shut it, opened it again. What the hell. "Know who pushed me in the trunk and slammed it shut?" I asked Alcide. His green eyes locked onto me. His face became still, contained, as if he was afraid emotion would leak out. He turned and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him. For the first time, I registered that I was back in the guest bedroom in his apartment.
"So, who did the deed, Sookie?" Eric asked.
"His ex-girlfriend. Not so ex, after last night."
"Why would she do that?" Bill asked.
There was another significant silence. "Sookie was represented as Alcide's new girlfriend to gain entree to the club," Eric said delicately.
"Oh," Bill said. "Why did you need to go to the club?"
"You must have gotten hit on the head a few times, Bill," Eric said coldly. "She was trying to 'hear' where they had taken you."
This was getting too close to things Bill and I had to talk about alone.
"It's dumb to go back in there," I said. "What about a phone call?"
They both stared at me like I was turning into a frog.
"Well, what a good idea," Eric said.
***
The phone, as it turned out, was just listed under Russell Edgington's name; not "Mansion of Doom," or "Vampires R Us." I worked on getting my story straight as I downed the contents of a big opaque plastic mug. I hated the taste of the synthetic blood Bill insisted I drink, so he'd mixed it with apple juice, and I was trying not to look as I gulped it down.
They'd made me drink it straight when they'd gotten up to Alcide's apartment that evening; and I didn't ask them how. At least I knew why the clothes I'd borrowed from Bernard were really horrible now. I looked like I'd had my throat cut, instead of mangled by Bill's painful bite. It was still very sore, but it was better.
Of course I had been picked to make the call. I never met a man yet, above the age of sixteen, who liked to talk on the phone.
"Betty Joe Pickard, please," I said to the male voice that answered the phone.
"She's busy," he said promptly.
"I need to talk to her right now."
"She's otherwise engaged. May I take your number?"
"This is the woman who saved her life last night." No point beating around the bush. "I need to talk to her, right now. Tout de suite."
"I'll see."
There was a long pause. I could hear people walking by the phone from time to time, and I heard a lot of cheering that sounded as if it was corning from a distance. I didn't want to think about that too much. Eric, Bill, and Alcide—who had finally stomped back into the room when Bill had asked him if we could borrow his phone—were standing there making all kinds of faces at me, and I just shrugged back.
Finally, there was the click, click, click of heels on tile.
"I'm grateful, but you can't bank on this forever," Betty Jo Pickard said briskly. "We arranged for your healing, you had a place to stay to recuperate. We didn't erase your memory," she added, as if that was a little detail that had escaped her until just this moment. "What have you called to ask?"
"You have a vampire there, an Elvis impersonator?"
"So?" Suddenly she sounded very wary. "We caught an intruder within our walls last night, yes."
"This morning, after I left your place, I was stopped again," I said. We had figured this would sound convincing because I sounded so hoarse and weak.
There was a long silence while she thought through the implications. "You have a habit of being in the wrong place," she said, as if she were remotely sorry for me.
"They are getting me to call you now," I said carefully. "I am supposed to tell you that the vampire you have there, he's the real thing."
She laughed a little. "Oh, but …" she began. Then she fell silent. "You're shitting me, right?" Mamie Eisenhower would never have said that, I was willing to swear.
"Absolutely not. There was a vamp working in the morgue that night," I croaked. Betty Jo made a sound that came out between a gasp and a choke. "Don't call him by his real name. Call him 'Bubba.' And for goodness' sake, don't hurt him."
"But we've already … hold on!"
She ran. I could hear the urgent sound die away.
I sighed, and waited. After a few seconds, I was completely nuts with the two guys standing around looking down at me. I was strong enough to sit up, I figured.
Bill gently held me up, while Eric propped pillows behind my back. I was glad to see one of them had had the presence of mind to spread the yellow blanket over the bed so I wouldn't stain the bedspread. All this while, I'd held the phone clamped to my ear, and when it squawked, I was actually startled.
"We got him down in time," Betty Joe said brightly.
"The call came in time," I told Eric. He closed his eyes and seemed to be offering up a prayer. I wondered to whom Eric prayed. I waited for further instructions.
"Tell them," he said, "to just let him go, and he will take himself home. Tell them that we apologize for letting him stray."
I relayed that message from my "abductors."
Betty Jo was quick to dismiss the directions. "Would you ask if he could stay and sing to us a little? He's in pretty good shape," she said.
So I relayed that. Eric rolled his eyes. "She can ask him, but if he says no, she must take it to heart and not ask him anymore," he said. "It just upsets him, if he's not in the mood. And sometimes when he does sing, it brings back memories, and he gets, ah, obstreperous."
"All right," she said, after I'd explained. "We'll do our best. If he doesn't want to sing, we'll let him go right away." From the sound of it, she turned to someone by her. "He can sing, if he'll consent," she said, and the someone said, "Yippee!" Two big nights in a row for the crowd at the king of Mississippi's mansion, I guess.
Betty Joe said into the telephone, "I hope you get out of your difficulties. I don't know how whoever's got you got lucky enough to have the care of the greatest star in the world. Would he consider negotiating?"
She didn't know yet about the troubles that entailed. "Bubba" had an unfortunate predilection for cat blood, and he was addlepated, and he could only follow the simplest directions; though every now and then, he exhibited a streak of shrewdness. He followed directions quite literally.
"She wants permission to keep him," I told Eric. I was tired of being the go-between. But Betty Joe couldn't meet with Eric, or she'd know he was the supposed friend of Alcide's who'd helped me get to the mansion the night before.
This was all too complicated for me.
"Yes?" Eric said into the telephone. Suddenly he had an English accent. Mr. Master of Disguise. Soon he was saying things like, "He's a sacred trust," and, "You don't know what you're biting off," into the phone. (If I'd had any sense of humor that night, I would have thought the last statement was pretty funny.) After a little more conversation, he hung up, with a pleased air.
I was thinking how strange it was that Betty Joe hadn't indicated that anything else was amiss at the compound. She hadn't accused Bubba of taking their prisoner, and she hadn't commented on finding the body of Lorena. Not that she'd necessarily mention these things in a phone conversation with a human stranger; and, for that matter, not that there'd be much to find; vampires disintegrate pretty quickly. But the silver chains would still be in the pool, and maybe
enough sludge to identify as the corpse of a vampire. Of course, why would anyone look under the pool cover? But surely someone had noticed their star prisoner was gone?
Maybe they were assuming Bubba had freed Bill while he was roaming the compound. We'd told him not to say anything, and he would follow that directive to the letter.
Maybe I was off the hook. Maybe Lorena would be completely dissolved by the time they started to clean the pool in the spring.
The topic of corpses reminded me of the body we'd found stuffed in the closet of this apartment. Someone sure knew where we were, and someone sure didn't like us. Leaving the body there was an attempt to tie us to the crime of murder, which, actually, I had committed. I just hadn't done that particular murder. I wondered if the body of Jerry Falcon had been discovered yet. The chance seemed remote. I opened my mouth to ask Alcide if it had been on the news, and then I closed it again. I lacked the energy to frame the sentence.
My life was spinning out of control. In the space of two days I'd hidden one corpse and created another one. And all because I'd fallen in love with a vampire. I gave Bill an unloving glance. I was so absorbed in my thoughts, I hardly heard the telephone. Alcide, who had gone into the kitchen, must have answered it on the first ring.
Alcide appeared in the door of the bedroom. "Move," he said, "you all have to move next door into the empty apartment. Quick, quick!"
Bill scooped me up, blanket and all. We were out the door and Eric was breaking the lock on the apartment next to Alcide's before you could say "Jack Daniels." I heard the slow grumble of the elevator arriving on the fifth floor as Bill closed the door behind us.
We stood stock-still in the empty cold living room of the barren apartment. The vampires were listening intently to what was going on next door. I began to shiver in Bill's arms.
To tell the truth, it felt great to be held by him, no matter how angry I had been at him, no matter how many issues we had to settle. To tell the truth, I had a dismayingly wonderful sense of homecoming. To tell the truth, no matter how battered my body was—and battered at his hands, or rather, his fangs—that body could hardly wait to meet up with his body again, buck naked, despite the terrible incident in the trunk. I sighed. I was disappointed in myself. I would have to stand up for my psyche, because my body was ready to betray me, big time. It seemed to be blacking out Bill's mindless attack.
Bill laid me on the floor in the smaller guest bedroom of this apartment as carefully as if I'd cost him a million dollars, and he swaddled me securely in the blanket. He and Eric listened at the wall, which was shared with Alcide's bedroom.
"What a bitch," Eric murmured. Oh. Debbie was back.
I closed my eyes. Eric made a little noise of surprise and I opened them again. He was looking at me, and there was that disconcerting amusement in his face again.
"Debbie stopped by his sister's house last night to grill her about you. Alcide's sister likes you very much," Eric said in a tiny whisper. "This angers the shape-shifter Debbie. She is insulting his sister in front of him."
Bill's face showed he was not so thrilled.
Suddenly every line in Bill's body became tense, as if someone had jammed Bill's finger in an electric socket. Eric's jaw dropped and he looked at me with an unreadable expression.
There was the unmistakable sound of a slap—even I could hear it—from the next room.
"Leave us for a moment," Bill said to Eric. I didn't like the sound of his voice.
I closed my eyes. I didn't think I was up to whatever would come next. I didn't want to argue with Bill, or upbraid him for his unfaithfulness. I didn't want to listen to explanations and excuses.
I heard the whisper of movement as Bill knelt beside me on the carpet. Bill stretched out beside me, turned on his side, and laid his arm across me.
"He just told this woman how good you are in bed," Bill murmured gently.
I came up from my prone position so fast that it tore my healing neck and gave me a twinge in my nearly healed side.
I clapped my hand to my neck and gritted my teeth so I wouldn't moan. When I could talk, I could only say, "He what? He what?" I was almost incoherent with anger. Bill gave me a piercing look, put his finger over his lips to remind me to be quiet.
"I never did," I whispered furiously. "But even if I had, you know what? It would serve you right, you betraying son of a bitch." I caught his eyes with mine and stared right into them. Okay, we were going to do this now.
"You're right," he murmured. "Lie down, Sookie. You are hurting."
"Of course I'm hurting," I whispered, and burst into tears. "And to have the others tell me, to hear that you were just going to pension me off and go live with her without even having the courage
to talk to me about it yourself! Bill, how could you be capable of such a thing! I was idiot enough to think you really loved me!" With a savagery I could scarcely believe was coming from inside me, I tossed off the blanket and threw myself on him, my fingers scrabbling for his throat.
And to hell with the pain.
My hands could not circle his neck, but I dug in as hard as I could and I felt a red rage carry me away. I wanted to kill him.
If Bill had fought back, I could have kept it up, but the longer I squeezed, the more the fine rage ebbed away, leaving me cold and empty. I was straddling Bill, and he was prone on the floor, lying passively with his hands at his sides. My hands eased off of his neck and I used them to cover my face.
"I hope that hurt like hell," I said, my voice choking but clear enough.
"Yes," he said. "It hurt like hell."
Bill pulled me down to the floor by him, covered us both with the blanket. He gently pushed my head into the notch of his neck and shoulder.
We lay there in silence for what seemed like a long time, though maybe it was only minutes. My body nestled into his out of habit and out of a deep need; though I didn't know if the need was for Bill specifically, or the intimacy I'd only shared with him. I hated him. I loved him.
"Sookie," he said, against my hair, "I'm—"
"Hush," I said. "Hush." I huddled closer against him. I relaxed. It was like taking off an Ace bandage, one that had been wrapped too tight.
"You're wearing someone else's clothes," he whispered, after a minute or two.
"Yes, a vampire named Bernard. He gave me clothes to wear after my dress got ruined at the bar."
"At Josephine's?"
"Yes."
"How did your dress get ruined?"
"I got staked."
Everything about him went still. "Where? Did it hurt?" He folded down the blanket. "Show me."
"Of course it hurt," I said deliberately. "It hurt like hell." I lifted the hem of the sweatshirt carefully.
His fingers stroked the shiny skin. I would not heal like Bill. It might take a night or two more for him to become as smooth and perfect as he had been, but he would look just as before, despite a week of torture. I would have a scar the rest of my life, vampire blood or no vampire blood. The scar might not be as severe, and it was certainly forming at a phenomenal rate, but it was undeniably red and ugly, the flesh underneath it still tender, the whole area sore.
"Who did this to you?"
"A man. A fanatic. It's a long story."
"Is he dead?"
"Yeah. Betty Joe Pickard killed him with two big blows of her fist. It kind of reminded me of a story I read in elementary school, about Paul Bunyan."
"I don't know that story." His dark eyes caught mine.
I shrugged.
"As long as he's dead now." Bill had a good grip on that idea.
"Lots of people are dead now. All because of your program."
There was a long moment of silence.
Bill cast a glance at the door Eric had tactfully closed behind him. Of course, he was probably listening right outside, and like all vampires, Eric had excellent hearing. "It's safe?"
"Yes."
Bill's mouth was right by my ear. It tickled when he whispered, "Did they search my house?"
"I don't know. Maybe the vamps from Mississippi went in. I never had a chance to get over there after Eric and Pam and Chow came to tell me you'd been snatched."
"And they told you … ?"
"That you were planning on leaving me. Yes. They told me."
"I already got paid back for that piece of madness," Bill said.
"You might have been paid back enough to suit you" I said, "but I don't know if you've been paid back enough to suit me."
There was a long silence in the cold, empty room. It was quiet out in the living room, too. I hoped Eric had worked out what we were going to do next, and I hoped it involved going home. No matter what happened between Bill and me, I needed to be home in Bon Temps. I needed to go back to my job and my friends and I needed to see my brother. He might not be much, but he was what I had.
I wondered what was happening in the next apartment.
"When the queen came to me and said she'd heard I was working on a program that had never been attempted before, I was flattered," Bill told me. "The money she offered was very good, and she would have been within her rights not to offer any, since I am her subject."
I could feel my mouth twisting at hearing yet another reminder of how different Bill's world was from mine. "Who do you think told her?" I asked.
"I don't know. I don't really want to," Bill said. His voice sounded offhand, even gentle, but I knew better.
"You know I had been working on it for some time," Bill said, when he figured I wasn't going to say anything.
"Why?"
"Why?" He sounded oddly disconcerted. "Well, because it seemed like a good idea to me. Having a list of all America's vampires, and at least some of the rest of the world's? That was a valuable project, and actually, it was kind of fun to compile. And once I started doing research, I thought of including pictures. And aliases. And histories. It just grew."
"So you've been, um, compiling a—like a directory? Of vampires?"
"Exactly." Bill's glowing face lit up even brighter. "I just started one night, thinking how many other vampires I'd come across in my travels over the past century, and I started making a list, and then I started adding a drawing I'd done or a photograph I'd taken."
"So vampires do photograph? I mean, they show up in pictures?"
"Sure. We never liked to have our picture made, when photography became a common thing in America, because a picture was proof we'd been in a particular place at a particular time, and if we showed up looking exactly the same twenty years later, well, it was obvious what we were. But since we have admitted our existence, there is no point clinging to the old ways."
"I'll bet some vampires still do."
"Of course. There are some who still hide in the shadows and sleep in crypts every night."
(This from a guy who slept in the soil of the cemetery from time to time.)
"And other vampires helped you with this?"
"Yes," he said, sounding surprised. "Yes, a few did. Some enjoyed the exercise of memory … some used it as a reason to search for old acquaintances, travel to old haunts. I am sure that I don't have all the vampires in America, especially the recent immigrants, but I think I have probably eighty percent of them."
"Okay, so why is the queen so anxious to have this program? Why would the other vampires want it, once they learned about it? They could assemble all the same information, right?"
"Yes," he said. "But it would be far easier to take it from me. And as for why it's so desirable to have this program … wouldn't you like to have a booklet that listed all the other telepaths in the United States?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "I could get lots of tips on how to handle my problem, or maybe how to use it better."
"So, wouldn't it be good to have a directory of vampires in the United States, what they're good at, where their gifts lie?"
"But surely some vampires really wouldn't want to be in such a book," I said. "You've told me that some vamps don't want to come out, that they want to stay in the darkness and hunt secretly."
"Exactly."
"Those vamps are in there, too?"
Bill nodded.
"Do you want to get yourself staked?"
"I never realized how tempting this project would be to anyone else. I never thought of how much power it would give to the one who owned it, until others began trying to steal it."
Bill looked glum.
The sound of shouting in the apartment next door drew our attention.
Alcide and Debbie were at it again. They were really bad for each other. But some mutual attraction kept them ricocheting back to each other. Maybe, away from Alcide, Debbie was a nice person.
Nah, I couldn't bring myself to believe that. But maybe she was at least tolerable when Alcide's affections weren't an issue.
Of course they should separate. They should never be in the same room again.
And I had to take this to heart.
Look at me. Mangled, drained, staked, battered. Lying in a cold apartment in a strange city with a vampire who had betrayed me.
A big decision was standing right in front of my face, waiting to be recognized and enacted.
I shoved Bill away, and wobbled to my feet. I pulled on my stolen jacket. With his silence heavy at my back, I opened the door to the living room. Eric was listening with some amusement to the battle going on in the next apartment.
"Take me home," I said.
"Of course," he said. "Now?"
"Yes. Alcide can drop my things by when he goes back to Baton Rouge."
"Is the Lincoln drivable?"
"Oh, yes." I pulled the keys out of my pocket. "Here."
We walked out of the empty apartment and took the elevator down to the garage.
Bill didn't follow.
Chapter Thirteen
Eric caught up with me as I was climbing into the Lincoln.
"I had to give Bill a few instructions about cleaning up the mess he caused," he said, though I didn't ask.
Eric was used to driving sports cars, and he had a few issues with the Lincoln.
"Had it occurred to you," he said, after we'd rolled out of the city's center, "that you tend to walk away when things between you and Bill become rocky? Not that I mind, necessarily, since I would be glad for you two to sever your association. But if this is the pattern you follow in your romantic attachments, I want to know now."
I thought of several things to say, discarded the first few, which would have blistered my grandmother's ears, and drew a deep breath.
"Firstly, Eric, what happens between Bill and me is just none of your damn business." I let that sink in for a few seconds. "Second, my relationship with Bill is the only one I've ever had, so I've never had any idea what I'm going to do even from day to day, much less establishing a policy." I paused to work on phrasing my next idea. "Third, I'm through with you all. I'm tired of seeing all this sick stuff. I'm tired of having to be brave, and having to do things that scare me, and having to hang out with the bizarre and the supernatural. I am just a regular person, and I just want to date regular people. Or at least people who are breathing."
Eric waited to see if I'd finished. I cast a quick glance over at him, and the streetlights illuminated his strong profile with its knife-edge nose. At least he wasn't laughing at me. He wasn't even smiling.
He glanced at me briefly before turning his attention back to the road. "I'm listening to what you say. I can tell you mean it. I've had your blood: I know your feelings."
A mile of darkness went by. I was pleased Eric was taking me seriously. Sometimes he didn't; and sometimes he didn't seem to care what he said to me.
"You are spoiled for humans," Eric said. His slight foreign accent was more apparent.
"Maybe I am. Though I don't see that as much of a loss, since I didn't have any luck with guys before." Hard to date, when you know exactly what your date is thinking. So much of the time,
knowing a man's exact thoughts can erase desire and even liking. "But I'd be happier with no one than I am now."
I'd been considering the old Ann Landers rule of thumb: Would I be better off with him, or without him? My grandmother and Jason and I had read Ann Landers every day when Jason and I had been growing up. We'd discussed all Ann's responses to reader questions. A lot of the advice she'd ladled out had been intended to help women deal with guys like Jason, so he certainly brought perspective to the conversations.
Right at this moment, I was pretty darn sure I was better off without Bill. He'd used me and abused me, betrayed me and drained me.
He'd also defended me, avenged me, worshiped me with his body, and provided hours of uncritical companionship, a very major blessing.
Well, I just didn't have my scales handy. What I had was a heart full of hurt and a way to go home. We flew through the black night, wrapped in our own thoughts. Traffic was light, but this was an interstate, so of course there were cars around us from time to time.
I had no idea what Eric was thinking about, a wonderful feeling. He might be debating pulling over to the shoulder and breaking my neck, or he might be wondering what tonight's take at Fangtasia would add up to. I wanted him to talk to me. I wished he would tell me about his life before he became a vampire, but that's a real touchy subject with lots of vamps, and I wasn't about to bring it up tonight of all nights.
About an hour out of Bon Temps, we took an exit ramp. We were a little low on gas, and I needed to use the ladies' room. Eric had already begun to fill the tank as I eased my sore body carefully out of the car. He had dismissed my offer to pump the gas with a courteous, "No, thank you." One other car was filling up, and the woman, a peroxide blond about my age, hung up the nozzle as I got out of the Lincoln.
At one in the morning, the gas station/convenience store was almost empty besides the young woman, who was heavily made up and wrapped in a quilted coat. I spied a battered Toyota pickup parked by the side of the filling station, in the only shadow on the lot. Inside the pickup, two men were sitting, involved in a heated conversation.
"It's too cold to be sitting outside in a pickup," the dark-rooted blond said, as we went through the glass doors together. She gave an elaborate shiver.
"You'd think so," I commented. I was halfway down the aisle by the back of the store, when the clerk, behind a high counter on a raised platform, turned away from his little television to take the blond's money.
The door to the bathroom was hard to shut behind me, since the wooden sill had swollen during some past leakage. In fact, it probably didn't shut all the way behind me, since I was in something of a hurry. But the stall door shut and locked, and it was clean enough. In no hurry to get back in the car with the silent Eric, I took my time after using the facilities. I peered in the mirror over the sink, expecting I'd look like holy hell and not being contradicted by what I saw reflected there.
The mangled bite mark on my neck looked really disgusting, as though a dog had had hold of me. As I cleaned the wound with soap and wet paper towels, I wondered if having ingested vampire blood would give me a specific quantity of extra strength and healing, and then be exhausted, or if it was good for a certain amount of time like a time-release capsule, or what the deal was. After I'd had Bill's blood, I'd felt great for a couple of months.
I didn't have a comb or brush or anything, and I looked like something the cat dragged in. Trying to tame my hair with my fingers just made a bad thing worse. I washed my face and neck, and stepped back into the glare of the store. I hardly registered that once again the door didn't shut behind me, instead lodged quietly on the swollen sill. I emerged behind the last long aisle of groceries, crowded with CornNuts and Lays Chips and Moon Pies and Scotch Snuf and Prince Albert in a can …
And two armed robbers up by the clerk's platform inside the door.
Holy Moses, why don't they just give these poor clerks shirts with big targets printed on them? That was my first thought, detached, as if I were watching a movie with a convenience store robbery. Then I snapped into the here and now, tuned in by the very real strain on the clerk's face. He was awfully young—a reedy, blotched teenager. And he was facing the two big guys with guns. His hands were in the air, and he was mad as hell. I would have expected blubbering for his life, or incoherence, but this boy was furious.
It was the fourth time he'd been robbed, I read fresh from his brain. And the third time at gunpoint. He was wishing he could grab the shotgun under the seat in his truck behind the store and blast these sumbitches to hell.
And no one acknowledged that I was there. They didn't seem to know.
Not that I was complaining, okay?
I glanced behind me, to verify that the door to the bathroom had stuck open again, so its sound would not betray me. The best thing for me to do would be to creep out the back door to this place, if I could find it, and run around the building to get Eric to call the police.
Wait a minute. Now that I was thinking of Eric, where was he? Why hadn't he come in to pay for the gas?
If it was possible to have a foreboding any more ominous than the one I already had, that fit the bill. If Eric hadn't come in yet, Eric wasn't coming. Maybe he'd decided to leave. Leave me.
Here.
Alone.
Just like Bill left you, my mind supplied helpfully. Well, thanks a hell of a lot, Mind.
Or maybe they'd shot him. If he'd taken a head wound … and there was no healing a heart that had taken a direct hit with a big-caliber bullet.
There was no point whatsoever in standing there worrying.
This was a typical convenience store. You came in the front door, and the clerk was behind a long counter to your right, up on a platform. The cold drinks were in the refrigerator case that took up the left wall. You were facing three long aisles running the width of the store, plus various special displays and stacks of insulated mugs and charcoal briquettes and birdseed. I was all the way at the back of the store and I could see the clerk (easily) and the crooks (just barely) over the top of the groceries. I had to get out of the store, preferably unseen. I spotted a splintered wooden door, marked "Employees Only" farther along the back wall. It was actually beyond the counter behind which the clerk stood. There was a gap between the end of the counter and the wall, and from the end of my aisle to the beginning of that counter, I'd be exposed.
Nothing would be gained by waiting.
I dropped to my hands and knees and began crawling. I moved slowly, so I could listen, too.
"You seen a blond come in here, about this tall?" the burlier of the two robbers was saying, and all of a sudden I felt faint.
Which blond? Me, or Eric? Or the peroxide blond? Of course, I couldn't see the height indication. Were they looking for a male vampire or a female telepath? Or … after all, I wasn't the only woman in the world who could get into trouble, I reminded myself.
"Blond woman come in here five minutes ago, bought some cigarettes," the boy said sullenly. Good for you, fella!
"Naw, that one done drove off. We want the one who was with the vampire."
Yep, that would be me.
"I didn't see no other woman," the boy said. I glanced up a little and saw the reflection off a mirror mounted up in the corner of the store. It was a security mirror so the clerk could detect shoplifters. I thought, He can see me crouching here. He knows I'm here.
God bless him. He was doing his best for me. I had to do my best for him. At the same time, if we could avoid getting shot, that would be a very good thing. And where the hell was Eric?
Blessing my borrowed sweatpants and slippers for being soft and silent, I crept deliberately toward the stained wooden "Employees Only" door. I wondered if it creaked. The two robbers were still talking to the clerk, but I blocked out their voices so I could concentrate on reaching the door.
I'd been scared before, plenty of times, but this was right up there with the scariest events of my life. My dad had hunted, and Jason and his buddies hunted, and I'd watched a massacre in Dallas. I knew what bullets could do. Now that I'd reached the end of the aisle, I'd come to the end of my cover.
I peered around the display counter's end. I had to cross about four feet of open floor to reach the partial shelter of the long counter that ran in front of the cash register. I would be lower and well hidden from the robbers' perspective, once I crossed that empty space.
"Car pulling in," the clerk said, and the two robbers automatically looked out the plate glass window to see. If I hadn't known what he was doing telepathically, I might have hesitated too long. I scuttled across the exposed linoleum faster than I would have believed possible.
"I don't see no car," said the less bulky man.
The clerk said, "I thought I heard the bell ring, the one that goes when a car drives across it."
I reached up and turned the knob on the door. It opened quietly.
"It rings sometimes when there ain't nobody there," the boy continued, and I realized he was trying to make noise and hold their attention so I could get out the door. God bless him, all over again.
I pushed the door a little wider, and duck-walked through. I was in a narrow passage. There was another door at the end of it, a door that presumably led to the area behind the convenience store. In the door was a set of keys. They wisely kept the back door locked. From one of a row of nails by the back door hung a heavy camo jacket. I poked my hand down in the pocket on the right
and came up with the boy's keys. That was just a lucky guess. It happens. Clutching them to prevent their jingling, I opened the back door and stepped outside.
There was nothing out here but a battered pickup and a reeking Dumpster. The lighting was poor, but at least there was some light. The blacktop was cracked. Since it was winter, the weeds that had sprouted up from those cracks were dry and bleached. I heard a little sound to my left and drew in a shaky breath after I'd jumped about a foot. The sound was caused by a huge old raccoon, and he ambled off into the small patch of woods behind the store.
I exhaled just as shakily as I'd drawn the air in. I made myself focus on the bunch of keys. Unfortunately, there were about twenty. This boy had more keys than squirrels had acorns. No one on God's green earth could possibly use this many keys. I flicked through them desperately, and finally selected one that had GM stamped on a black rubber cover. I unlocked the door and reached into the musty interior, which smelled strongly of cigarettes and dogs. Yes, the shotgun was under the seat. I broke it open. It was loaded. Thank God Jason believed in self-defense. He'd showed me how to load and fire his new Benelli.
Despite my new protection, I was so scared, I wasn't sure I could get around to the front of the store. But I had to scout out the situation, and find out what had happened to Eric. I eased down the side of the building where the old Toyota truck was parked. Nothing was in the back, except a little spot that picked up a stray fraction of light. The shotgun cradled in one arm, I reached down to run a finger over it.
Fresh blood. I felt old and cold. I stood with my head bowed for a long moment, and then I braced myself.
I looked in the driver's window to find the cab was unlocked. Well, happy days. I opened the door quietly, glanced in. There was a sizeable open box on the front seat, and when I checked its contents, my heart sank so low, I thought it'd come out the bottom of my shoes. On the outside, the box was stamped "Contents: Two." Now it contained one silver mesh net, the kind sold in "mercenary" magazines, the kind always advertised as "vampire proof."
That was like calling a shark cage a sure deterrent from shark bites.
Where was Eric? I glanced over the immediate vicinity, but I saw no other trace. I could hear traffic whooshing by on the interstate, but the silence hung over this bleak parking lot.
My eyes lit on a pocketknife on the dash. Yahoo! Carefully placing the shotgun on the front seat, I scooped up the knife, opened it after I'd laid down the shotgun, and I held it ready to sink into the tire. Then I thought twice. A wholehearted tire-slashing was proof someone had been out here while the robbers were inside. That might not be a good thing. I contented myself with poking a single hole in the tire. It was just a smallish hole that might have come from anything, I told
myself. If they did drive off, they'd have to stop somewhere down the road. Then I pocketed the knife—I was certainly quite the thief lately—and returned to the shadows around the building. This hadn't taken as long as you might think, but still it had been several minutes since I'd assessed the situation in the convenience store.
The Lincoln was still parked by the pumps. The gas port was closed, so I knew Eric had finished refueling before something had happened to him. I sidled around the corner of the building, hugging its lines. I found good cover at the front, in the angle formed by the ice machine and the front wall of the store. I risked standing up enough to peek over the top of the machine.
The robbers had come up into the higher area where the clerk stood, and they were beating on him.
Hey, now. That had to stop. They were beating him because they wanted to know where I was hiding, was my guess; and I couldn't let someone else get beaten up on my behalf.
"Sookie," said a voice right behind me.
The next instant a hand clapped across my mouth just as I was about to scream.
"Sorry," Eric whispered. "I should have thought of a better way to let you know I was here."
"Eric," I said, when I could speak. He could tell I was calmer, and he moved his hand. "We gotta save him."
"Why?"
Sometimes vampires just astound me. Well, people, too, but tonight it was a vampire.
"Because he's getting beaten for our sakes, and they're probably gonna kill him, and it'll be our fault!"
"They're robbing the store," Eric said, as if I were particularly dim. "They had a new vampire net, and they thought they'd try it out on me. They don't know it yet, but it didn't work. But they're just opportunistic scum."
"They're looking for us," I said furiously.
"Tell me," he whispered, and I did.
"Give me the shotgun," he said.
I kept a good grip on it. "You know how to use one of these things?"
"Probably as well as you." But he looked at it dubiously.
"That's where you're wrong," I told him. Rather than have a prolonged argument while my new hero was getting internal injuries, I ran in a crouch around the ice machine, the propane gas rack, and through the front door into the store. The little bell over the door rang like crazy, and though with all the shouting they didn't seem to hear it, they sure paid attention when I fired a blast through the ceiling over their heads. Tiles, dust, and insulation rained down.
It almost knocked me flat—but not quite. I leveled the gun right on them. They were frozen. It was like playing Swing the Statue when I was little. But not quite. The poor pimply clerk had a bloody face, and I was sure his nose was broken, and some of his teeth knocked loose.
I felt a fine rage break out behind my eyes. "Let the young man go," I said clearly.
"You gonna shoot us, little lady?"
"You bet your ass I am," I said.
"And if she misses, I will get you," said Eric's voice, above and behind me. A big vampire makes great backup.
"The vampire got loose, Sonny." The speaker was a thinnish man with filthy hands and greasy boots.
"I see that," said Sonny, the heavier one. He was darker, too. The smaller man's head was covered with that no-color hair, the kind people call "brown" because they have to call it something.
The young clerk pulled himself up out of his pain and fear and came around the counter as fast as he could move. Mixed with the blood on his face was a lot of white powder from me shooting into the ceiling. He looked a sight.
"I see you found my shotgun," he said as he passed by me, carefully not getting between the bad guys and me. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, and I heard the tiny beeps as he pressed numbers. His growly voice was soon in staccato conversation with the police.
"Before the police get here, Sookie, we need to find out who sent these two imbeciles," Eric said. If I'd been them, I'd have been mighty scared at the tone of his voice, and they seemed to be aware of what an angry vampire could do. For the first time Eric stepped abreast of me and then a little bit ahead, and I could see his face. Burns crisscrossed it like angry strings of poison ivy welts. He was lucky only his face had been bare, but I doubt he was feeling very lucky.
"Come down here," Eric said, and he caught the eyes of Sonny.
Sonny immediately walked down from the clerk's platform and around the counter while his companion was gaping.
"Stay," said Eric. The no-color man squeezed his eyes shut so he couldn't glimpse Eric, but he opened them just a crack when he heard Eric take a step closer, and that was enough. If you don't have any extra abilities yourself, you just can't look a vampire in the eyes. If they want to, they'll get you.
"Who sent you here?" Eric asked softly.
"One of the Hounds of Hell," Sonny said, with no inflection in his voice.
Eric looked startled. "A member of the motorcycle gang," I explained carefully, mindful that we had a civilian audience who was listening with great curiosity. I was getting a great amplification of the answers through their brains.
"What did they tell you to do?"
"They told us to wait along the interstate. There are more fellas waiting at other gas stations."
They'd called about forty thugs altogether. They'd outlaid a lot of cash.
"What were you supposed to watch for?"
"A big dark guy and a tall blond guy. With a blond woman, real young, with nice tits."
Eric's hand moved too fast for me to track. I was only sure he'd moved when I saw the blood running down Sonny's face.
"You are speaking of my future lover. Be more respectful. Why were you looking for us?"
"We were supposed to catch you. Take you back to Jackson."
"Why?"
"The gang suspected you mighta had something to do with Jerry Falcon's disappearance. They wanted to ask you some questions about it. They had someone watching some apartment building, seen you two coming out in a Lincoln, had you followed part of the way. The dark guy wasn't with you, but the woman was the right one, so we started tracking you."
"Do the vampires of Jackson know anything about this plan?"
"No, the gang figured it was their problem. But they also got a lot of other problems, a prisoner escape and so on, and lots of people out sick. So what with one thing and another, they recruited a bunch of us to help."
"What are these men?" Eric asked me.
I closed my eyes and thought carefully. "Nothing," I said. "They're nothing." They weren't shifters, or Weres, or anything. They were hardly human beings, in my opinion, but nobody died and made me God.
"We need to get out of here," Eric said. I agreed heartily. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the night at the police station, and for Eric, that was an impossibility. There wasn't an approved vampire jail cell any closer than Shreveport. Heck, the police station in Bon Temps had just gotten wheelchair accessible.
Eric looked into Sonny's eyes. "We weren't here," he said. "This lady and myself."
"Just the boy," Sonny agreed.
Again, the other robber tried to keep his eyes tight shut, but Eric blew in his face, and just as a dog would, the man opened his eyes and tried to wiggle back. Eric had him in a second, and repeated his procedure.
Then he turned to the clerk and handed him the shotgun. "Yours, I believe," Eric said.
"Thanks," the boy said, his eyes firmly on the barrel of the gun. He aimed at the robbers. "I know you weren't here," he growled, keeping his gaze ahead of him. "And I ain't saying nothing to the police."
Eric put forty dollars on the counter. "For the gas," he explained. "Sookie, let's make tracks."
"A Lincoln with a big hole in the trunk does stand out," the boy called after us.
"He's right." I was buckling up and Eric was accelerating as we heard sirens, pretty close.
"I should have taken the truck," Eric said. He seemed pleased with our adventure, now that it was over.
"How's your face?"
"It's getting better."
The welts were not nearly as noticeable.
"What happened?" I asked, hoping this was not a very touchy subject.
He cast me a sideways glance. Now that we were back on the interstate, we had slowed down to the speed limit, so it wouldn't seem to any of the many police cars converging on the convenience store that we were fleeing.
"While you were tending to your human needs in the bathroom," he said, "I finished putting gas in the tank. I had hung up the pump and was almost at the door when those two got out of the truck and just tossed a net over me. It is very humiliating, that they were able to do that, two fools with a silver net."
"Your mind must have been somewhere else."
"Yes," he said shortly. "It was."
"So then what happened?" I asked, when it seemed he was going to stop there.
"The heavier one hit me with the butt of his gun, and it took me a small time to recover," Eric said.
"I saw the blood."
He touched a place on the back of his head. "Yes, I bled. After getting used to the pain, I snagged a corner of the net on the bumper of their truck and managed to roll out of it. They were inept in that, as well as robbery. If they had tied the net shut with silver chains, the result might have been different."
"So you got free?"
"The head blow was more of a problem than I thought at first," Eric said stiffly. "I ran along the back of the store to the water spigot on the other side. Then I heard someone coming out of the back. When I was recovered, I followed the sounds and found you." After a long moment's silence, Eric asked me what had happened in the store.
"They got me confused with the other woman who went in the store at the same time I went to the ladies' room," I explained. "They didn't seem to be sure I was in the store, and the clerk was telling them that there had been only one woman, and she'd gone. I could tell he had a shotgun in
his truck—you know, I heard it in his head—and I went and got it, and I disabled their truck, and I was looking for you because I figured something had happened to you."
"So you planned to save me and the clerk, together?"
"Well … yeah." I couldn't understand the odd tone of his voice. "I didn't feel like I had a whole lot of choices there."
The welts were just pink lines now.
The silence still didn't seem relaxed. We were about forty minutes from home now. I started to let it drop. I didn't.
"You don't seem too happy about something," I said, a definite edge to my voice. My own temper was fraying around the edges. I knew I was heading in the wrong direction conversationally; I knew I should just be content with silence, however brooding and pregnant.
Eric took the exit for Bon Temps and turned south.
Sometimes, instead of going down the road less taken, you just charge right down the beaten path.
"Would there be something wrong with me rescuing the two of you?" We were driving through Bon Temps now. Eric turned east after the buildings along Main gradually thinned and vanished. We passed Merlotte's, still open. We turned south again, on a small parish road. Then we were bumping down my driveway.
Eric pulled over and killed the engine. "Yes," he said. "There is something wrong with that. And why the hell don't you get your driveway fixed?"
The string of tension that had stretched between us popped. I was out of the car in a New York minute, and he was, too. We faced each other across the roof of the Lincoln, though not much of me showed. I charged around it until I was right in front of him.
"Because I can't afford it, that's why! I don't have any money! And you all keep asking me to take time off from my job to do stuff for you! I can't! I can't do it anymore!" I shrieked. "I quit!"
There was a long moment of silence while Eric regarded me. My chest was heaving underneath my stolen jacket. Something felt funny, something was bothering me about the appearance of my house, but I was too het up to examine my worry.
"Bill …" Eric began cautiously, and it set me off like a rocket.
"He's spending all his money on the freaking Bellefleurs," I said, my tone this time low and venomous, but no less sincere. "He never thinks about giving me money. And how could I take it? It would make me a kept woman, and I'm not his whore, I'm his … I used to be his girlfriend."
I took a deep, shuddering breath, dismally aware that I was going to cry. It would be better to get mad again. I tried. "Where do you get off, telling them that I'm your … your lover? Where'd that come from?"
"What happened to the money you earned in Dallas?" Eric asked, taking me completely by surprise.
"I paid my property taxes with it."
"Did you ever think that if you told me where Bill's hiding his computer program, I would give you anything you asked for? Did you not realize that Russell would have paid you handsomely?"
I sucked in my breath, so offended, I hardly knew where to begin.
"I see you didn't think of those things."
"Oh, yeah, I'm just an angel." Actually, none of those things had occurred to me, and I was almost defensive they hadn't. I was shaking with fury, and all my good sense went out the window. I would feel the presence of other brains at work, and the fact that someone was in my place enraged me farther. The rational part of my mind crumpled under the weight of my anger.
"Someone's waiting in my house, Eric." I swung around and stomped over to my porch, finding the key I'd hidden under the rocker my grandmother had loved. Ignoring everything my brain was trying to tell me, ignoring the beginning of a bellow from Eric, I opened the front door and got hit with a ton of bricks.
Chapter Fourteen
"We got her," said a voice I didn't recognize. I had been yanked to my feet, and I was swaying between two men who were holding me up.
"What about the vamp?"
"I shot him twice, but he's in the woods. He got away."
"That's bad news. Work fast."
I could sense that there were many men in the room with me, and I opened my eyes. They'd turned on the lights. They were in my house. They were in my home. As much as the blow to my jaw, that made me sick. Somehow, I'd assumed my visitors would be Sam or Arlene or Jason.
There were five strangers in my living room, if I was thinking clearly enough to count. But before I could form another idea, one of the men—and now I realized he was wearing a familiar leather vest—punched me in the stomach.
I didn't have enough breath to scream.
The two men holding me pulled me back upright.
"Where is he?"
"Who?" I really couldn't remember, at this point, what particular missing person he wanted me to locate. But, of course, he hit me again. I had a dreadful minute when I needed to gag but hadn't the air to do it. I was strangling and suffocating.
Finally, I drew in a long breath. It was noisy and painful and just heaven.
My Were interrogator, who had light hair shaved close to his scalp and a nasty little goatee, slapped me, hard, open-handed. My head rocked on my neck like a car on faulty shock absorbers. "Where's the vampire, bitch?" the Were said. He drew his fist back.
I couldn't take any more of this. I decided to speed things up. I pulled my legs up, and while the two at my sides kept desperate grips on my arms, I kicked the Were in front of me with both feet. If I hadn't had on bedroom slippers, it probably would have been more effective. I'm never
wearing safety boots when I need them. But Nasty Goatee did stagger back, and then he came for me with my death in his eyes.
By then my legs had swung back to the floor, but I made them keep going backward, and threw my two captors completely off balance. They staggered, tried to recover, but their frantic footing was in vain. Down we all went, the Were along with us.
This might not be better, but it was an improvement over waiting to get hit.
I'd landed on my face, since my arms and hands weren't under my control. One guy did let go as we fell, and when I got that hand underneath me for leverage, I yanked away from the other man.
I'd gotten halfway to my feet when the Were, quicker than the humans, managed to grab my hair. He dealt a slap to my face while he wound my hair around his hand for a better grip. The other hired hands closed in, either to help the two on the floor to rise, or just to see me get battered.
A real fight is over in a few minutes because people wear out quick. It had been a very long day, and the fact was, I was ready to give up against these overwhelming odds. But I had a little pride and I went for the guy closest to me, a potbellied pig of a man with greasy dark hair. I dug my fingers into his face, trying to cause any damage I could, while I could.
The Were kneed me in the belly and I screamed, and the pig-man began to yell for the others to get me off of him, and the front door crashed open as Eric came in, blood covering his chest and right leg. Bill was right behind him.
They lost all control.
I saw firsthand what a vampire could do.
After a second, I realized my help would not be needed, and I decided the Goddess of Really Tough Gals would have to excuse me while I closed my eyes.
In two minutes, all the men in my living room were dead.
***
"Sookie? Sookie?" Eric's voice was hoarse. "Do we need to take her to the hospital?" he asked Bill.
I felt cool fingers on my wrist, touching my neck. I almost explained that for once I was conscious, but it was just too hard. The floor seemed like a good place to be.
"Her pulse is strong," Bill reported. "I'm going to turn her over."
"She's alive?"
"Yes."
Eric's voice, suddenly closer, said, "Is the blood hers?"
"Yes, some of it."
He drew a deep, shuddering breath. "Hers is different."
"Yes," Bill said coldly. "But surely you are full by now."
"It's been a long time since I had real blood in quantity," Eric said, just exactly like my brother, Jason, would have remarked it had been a long time since he'd had blackberry cobbler.
Bill slid his hands underneath me. "For me, too. We'll need to put them all out in the yard," he said casually, "and clean up Sookie's house."
"Of course."
Bill began rolling me over, and I began crying. I couldn't help it. As strong as I wanted to be, all I could think of was my body. If you've ever been really beaten, you'll know what I mean. When you've been really beaten, you realize that you are just an envelope of skin, an easily penetrated envelope that holds together a lot of fluids and some rigid structures, which in their turn can simply be broken and invaded. I thought I'd been badly hurt in Dallas a few weeks before, but this felt worse. I knew that didn't mean it was worse; there was a lot of soft tissue damage. In Dallas, my cheekbone had been fractured and my knee twisted. I thought maybe the knee had been compromised all over again, and I thought maybe one of the slaps had rebroken the cheekbone. I opened my eyes, blinked, and opened them again. My vision cleared after a few seconds.
"Can you speak?" Eric said, after a long, long moment.
I tried, but my mouth was so dry, nothing came out.
"She needs a drink." Bill went to the kitchen, having to take a less than direct route, since there were a lot of obstructions in the way.
Eric's hands stroked back my hair. He'd been shot, I remembered, and I wanted to ask him how he felt, but I couldn't. He was sitting on his butt beside me, leaning on the cushions of my couch. There was blood on his face, and he looked pinker than I'd ever seen him, ruddy with health. When Bill returned with my water—he'd even added a straw—I looked at his face. Bill looked almost sunburned.
Bill held me up carefully and put the straw to my lips. I drank, and it was the best thing I'd ever tasted.
"You killed them all," I said in a creaky voice.
Eric nodded.
I thought of the circle of brutish faces that had surrounded me. I thought of the Were slapping me in the face.
"Good," I said. Eric looked a little amused, just for a second. Bill didn't look anything in particular.
"How many?"
Eric looked around vaguely, and Bill pointed a finger silently as he toted them up.
"Seven?" Bill said doubtfully. "Two in the yard and five in the house?"
"I was thinking eight," Eric murmured.
"Why did they come after you like that?"
"Jerry Falcon."
"Oh," said Bill, a different note in his voice. "Oh, yes. I've encountered him. In the torture room. He is first on my list."
"Well, you can cross him off," Eric said. "Alcide and Sookie disposed of his body in the woods yesterday."
"Did this Alcide kill him?" Bill looked down at me, reconsidered. "Or Sookie?"
"He says no. They found the corpse in the closet of Alcide's apartment, and they hatched a plan to hide his remains." Eric sounded like that had been kind of cute of us.
"My Sookie hid a corpse?"
"I don't think you can be too sure about that possessive pronoun."
"Where did you learn that term, Northman?"
"I took 'English as a Second Language' at a community college in the seventies."
Bill said, "She is mine."
I wondered if my hands would move. They would. I raised both of them, making an unmistakable one-fingered gesture.
Eric laughed, and Bill said, "Sookie!" in shocked admonishment.
"I think that Sookie is telling us she belongs to herself," Eric said softly. "In the meantime, to finish our conversation, whoever stuffed the corpse in the closet meant to saddle Alcide with the blame, since Jerry Falcon had made a blatant pass at Sookie in the bar the night before, and Alcide had taken umbrage."
"So all this plot might be directed at Alcide instead of us?"
"Hard to say. Evidently, from what the armed robbers at the gas station told us, what's remaining of the gang called in all the thugs they knew and stationed them along the interstate to intercept us on the way back. If they'd just called ahead, they wouldn't now be in jail for armed robbery. And I'm certainly sure that's where they are."
"So how'd these guys get here? How'd they know where Sookie lived, who she really was?"
"She used her own name at Club Dead. They didn't know the name of Bill's human girlfriend. You were faithful."
"I hadn't been faithful in other ways," Bill said bleakly. "I thought it was the least I could do for her."
And this was the guy whom I'd shot the bird. On the other hand, this was the guy who was talking like I wasn't in the room. And most importantly, this was the guy who'd had another "darling," for whom he'd planned to leave me flat.
"So the Weres may not know she was your girlfriend; they only know she was staying in the apartment with Alcide when Jerry disappeared. They know Jerry may have come by the apartment. This Alcide says that the packmaster in Jackson told Alcide to leave and not return for a while, but that he believed Alcide had not killed Jerry."
"This Alcide … he seemed to have a troubled relationship with his girlfriend."
"She is engaged to someone else. She believes he is attached to Sookie."
"And is he? He has the gall to tell this virago Debbie that Sookie is good in bed."
"He wanted to make her jealous. He has not slept with Sookie."
"But he likes her." Bill made it sound like a capital crime.
"Doesn't everyone?"
I said, with great effort, "You just killed a bunch of guys who didn't seem to like me at all." I was tired of them talking about me right above my head, as illuminating as it was. I was hurting real bad, and my living room was full of dead men. I was ready for both those situations to be remedied.
"Bill, how'd you get here?" I asked in a raspy whisper.
"My car. I negotiated a deal with Russell, since I didn't want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my existence. Russell was in a tantrum when I called him. Not only had I disappeared and Lorena vanished, but his hired Weres had disobeyed him and thus jeopardized business dealings Russell has with this Alcide and his father."
"Who was Russell angriest with?" Eric asked.
"Lorena, for letting me escape."
They had a good laugh over that one before Bill continued his story. Those vamps. A laugh a minute.
"Russell agreed to return my car and leave me alone if I would tell him how I'd escaped, so he could plug the hole I'd wiggled out of. And he asked me to put in a bid for him to share in the vampire directory."
If Russell had just done that in the first place, it would have saved everyone a lot of grief. On the other hand, Lorena would still be alive. So would the thugs who'd beaten me, and perhaps so would Jerry Falcon, whose death was still a mystery.
"So," Bill continued, "I sped down the highway, on the way to tell you two that the Weres and their hired hands were pursuing you, and that they had gone ahead to lie in wait. They had discovered, via the computer, that Alcide's girlfriend Sookie Stackhouse lived in Bon Temps."
"These computers are dangerous things," Eric said. His voice sounded weary, and I remembered the blood on his clothes. Eric had been shot twice, because he'd been with me.
"Her face is swelling," Bill said. His voice was both gentle and angry.
"Eric okay?" I asked wearily, figuring I could skip a few words if I got the idea across.
"I will heal," he said, from a great distance. "Especially since having all that good …"
And then I fell asleep, or passed out, or some blend of the two.
***
Sunshine. It had been so long since I'd seen sunshine; I'd almost forgotten how good it looked.
I was in my own bed, and I was in my soft blue brushed-nylon nightgown, and I was wrapped up like a mummy. I really, really had to get up and get to the bathroom. Once I moved enough to establish how awful walking was going to be, only my bladder compelled me to get out of that bed.
I took tiny steps across the floor, which suddenly seemed as wide and empty as the desert. I covered it inch by painful inch. My toenails were still painted bronze, to match my nails. I had a lot of time to look at my toes as I made my journey.
Thank God I had indoor plumbing. If I'd had to make it into the yard to an outhouse, as my grandmother had as a child, I would've given up.
When I had completed my journey and pulled on a fleecy blue robe, I inched my way down the hall to the living room to examine the floor. I noticed along the way that the sun outside was brilliant and the sky was the deep rich blue of heaven. It was forty-two, said the thermometer Jason had given me on my birthday. He'd mounted it for me on the window frame, so I could just peek out to read it.
The living room looked real good. I wasn't sure how long the vampire cleaning crew had been at work the night before, but there were no body parts visible. The wood of the floor was gleaming, and the furniture looked spanky clean. The old throw rug was missing, but I didn't care. It had been no wonderful heirloom anyway, just a sort of pretty rug Gran had picked up at a flea market for thirty-five dollars. Why did I remember that? It didn't matter at all. And my grandmother was dead.
I felt the sudden danger of weeping, and I pushed it away. I wasn't going to fall back into a trough of self-pity. My reaction to Bill's unfaithfulness seemed faint and far away now; I was a colder woman, or maybe my protective hide had just grown thicker. I no longer felt angry with him, to my surprise. He'd been tortured by the woman—well, the vampire—he'd thought loved him. And she'd tortured him for financial gain—that was the worst.
To my startled horror, suddenly I relived the moment when the stake had gone in under her ribs, and I was feeling the movement of the wood as it plowed through her body.
I made it back to the hall bathroom just in time.
Okay, I'd killed someone.
I'd once hurt someone who was trying to kill me, but that had never bothered me: oh, the odd dream or two. But the horror of staking the vampire Lorena felt worse. She would've killed me a lot quicker, and I was sure it would have been no problem whatsoever for Lorena. She probably would've laughed her ass off.
Maybe that was what had gotten to me so much. After I'd sunk the stake in, I was sure I'd had a moment, a second, a flash of time in which I'd thought, So there, bitch. And it had been pure pleasure.
***
A couple of hours later, I'd discovered it was the early afternoon, and it was Monday. I called my brother on his cell phone, and he came by with my mail. When I opened my door, he stood for a long minute, looking me up and down.
"If he did that to you, I'm heading over there with a torch and a sharpened broom handle," he said.
"No, he didn't."
"What happened to the ones who did?"
"You better not think about it too much."
"At least he does some things right."
"I'm not gonna see him anymore."
"Uh-huh. I've heard that before."
He had a point. "For a while," I said firmly.
"Sam said you'd gone off with Alcide Herveaux."
"Sam shouldn't have told you."
"Hell, I'm your brother. I need to know who you're going around with."
"It was business," I said, trying a little smile on for size.
"You going into surveying?"
"You know Alcide?"
"Who doesn't, at least by name? Those Herveauxes, they're well known. Tough guys. Good to work for. Rich."
"He's a nice guy."
"He coming around anymore? I'd like to meet him. I don't want to be on a road crew working for the parish my whole life."
That was news to me. "Next time I see him, I'll call you. I don't know if he'll be stopping by anytime soon, but if he does, you'll know about it."
"Good." Jason glanced around. "What happened to the rug?"
I noticed a spot of blood on the couch, about where Eric had leaned. I sat down so my legs were covering it. "The rug? I spilled some tomato sauce on it. I was eating spaghetti out here while I watched TV."
"So you took it to get it cleaned?"
I didn't know how to answer. I didn't know if that was what the vampires had done with the rug, or if it'd had to be torched. "Yes," I said, with some hesitation. "But they may not be able to get the stain out, they said."
"New gravel looks good."
I stared at him in gape-mouthed surprise. "What?"
He looked at me as if I were a fool. "The new gravel. On the driveway. They did a good job, getting it level. Not a single pothole."
Completely forgetting the bloodstain, I heaved myself up from the couch with some difficulty and peered out the front window, this time really looking.
Not only was the driveway done, but also there was a new parking area in front of the house. It was outlined with landscaping timbers. The gravel was the very expensive kind, the kind that's supposed to interlock so it doesn't roll out of the desired area. I put my hand over my mouth as I calculated how much it had cost. "It's done like that all the way to the road?" I asked Jason, my voice hardly audible.
"Yeah, I saw the Burgess and Sons crew out here when I drove by earlier," he said slowly. "Didn't you fix it up to have it done?"
I shook my head.
"Damn, they did it by mistake?" Quick to rage, Jason flushed. "I'll call that Randy Burgess and ream his ass. Don't you pay the bill! Here's the note that was stuck to the front door." Jason pulled a rolled receipt from his front pocket. "Sorry, I was going to hand that to you before I noticed your face."
I unrolled the yellow sheet and read the note scribbled across it. "Sookie—Mr. Northman said not to knock on your door, so I'm sticking this to it. You may need this in case something is wrong. Just call us. Randy."
"It's paid for," I said, and Jason calmed a little.
"The boyfriend? The ex?"
I remembered screaming at Eric about my driveway. "No," I said. "Someone else." I caught myself wishing the man who'd been so thoughtful had been Bill.
"You sure are getting around these days," Jason said. He didn't sound as judgmental as I expected, but then Jason was shrewd enough to know he could hardly throw many stones.
I said flatly, "No, I'm not."
He eyed me for a long moment. I met his gaze. "Okay," he said slowly. "Then someone owes you, big time."
"That would be closer to the truth," I said, and wondered in turn if I myself was being truthful. "Thanks for getting my mail for me, Big Bro. I need to crawl back in bed."
"No problem. You want to go to the doctor?"
I shook my head. I couldn't face the waiting room.
"Then you let me know if you need me to get you some groceries."
"Thanks," I said again, with more pleasure. "You're a good brother." To our mutual surprise, I stood on tiptoe and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He awkwardly put his arm around me, and I made myself keep the smile on my face, rather than wincing from the pain.
"Get back in bed, Sis," he said, shutting the door behind him carefully. I noticed he stood on the porch for a full minute, surveying all that premium gravel. Then he shook his head and got back into his pickup, always clean and gleaming, the pink and aqua flames startling against the black paint that covered the rest of the truck.
I watched a little television. I tried to eat, but my face hurt too much. I felt lucky when I discovered some yogurt in the refrigerator.
A big pickup pulled up to the front of the house about three o'clock. Alcide got out with my suitcase. He knocked softly.
He might be happier if I didn't answer, but I figured I wasn't in the business of making Alcide Herveaux happy, and I opened the door.
"Oh, Jesus Christ," he said, not irreverently, as he took me in.
"Come in," I said, through jaws that were getting so sore I could barely part them. I knew I'd said I'll call Jason if Alcide came by; but Alcide and I needed to talk.
He came in and stood looking at me. Finally, he put the suitcase back in my room, fixed me a big glass of iced tea with a straw in it, and put it on the table by the couch. My eyes filled with tears. Not everyone would have realized that a hot drink made my swollen face hurt.
"Tell me what happened, chere," he said, sitting on the couch beside me. "Here, put your feet up while you do." He helped me swivel sideways and lay my legs over his lap. I had plenty of pillows propped behind me, and I did feel comfortable, or as comfortable as I was going to feel for a couple of days.
I told him everything.
"So, you think they'll come after me in Shreveport?" he asked. He didn't seem to be blaming me for bringing all this on his head, which frankly I'd half expected.
I shook my head helplessly. "I just don't know. I wish we knew what had really happened. That might get them off our backs."
"Weres are nothing if not loyal," Alcide said.
I took his hand. "I know that."
Alcide's green eyes regarded me steadily.
"Debbie asked me to kill you," he said.
For a moment I felt cold down to my bones. "What did you tell her back?" I asked, through stiff lips.
"I told her she could go fuck herself, excuse my language."
"And how do you feel now?"
"Numb. Isn't that stupid? I'm pulling her out of me by the roots, though. I told you I would. I had to do it. It's like being addicted to crack. She's awful."
I thought of Lorena. "Sometimes," I said, and even to my own ears I sounded sad, "the bitch wins." Lorena was far from dead between Bill and me. Speaking of Debbie raised yet another unpleasant memory. "Hey, you told her we had been to bed together, when you two were fighting!"
He looked profoundly embarrassed, his olive skin flushing. "I'm ashamed of that. I knew she'd been having a good time with her fiance; she bragged about it. I sort of used your name in vain when I was really mad. I apologize."
I could understand that, even though I didn't like it. I raised my eyebrows to indicate that wasn't quite enough.
"Okay, that was really low. A double apology and a promise to never do it again."
I nodded. I would accept that.
"I hated to hustle you all out of the apartment like that, but I didn't want her to see the three of you, in view of conclusions she might have drawn. Debbie can get really mad, and I thought if she saw you in conjunction with the vampires, she might hear a rumor that Russell was missing a prisoner and put two and two together. She might even be mad enough to call Russell."
"So much for loyalty among Weres."
"She's a shifter, not a Were," Alcide said instantly, and a suspicion of mine was confirmed. I was beginning to believe that Alcide, despite his stated conviction that he was determined to kept the
Were gene to himself, would never be happy with anyone but another Were. I sighed: I tried to keep it a nice, quiet sigh. I might be wrong, after all.
"Debbie aside," I said, waving my hand to show how completely Debbie was out of our conversational picture, "someone killed Jerry Falcon and put him in your closet. That's caused me—and you—a lot more trouble that the original mission, which was searching for Bill. Who would do something like that? It would have to be someone really malicious."
"Or someone really stupid," Alcide said fairly.
"I know Bill didn't do it, because he was a prisoner. And I'd swear Eric was telling the truth when he said he didn't do it." I hesitated, hating to bring a name back up. "But what about Debbie? She's …" I stopped myself from saying "a real bitch," because only Alcide should call her that. "She was angry with you for having a date," I said mildly. "Maybe she would put Jerry Falcon in your closet to cause you trouble?"
"Debbie's mean and she can cause trouble, but she's never killed anyone," Alcide said. "She doesn't have the, the … grit for it, the sand. The will to kill."
Okay. Just call me Sandy.
Alcide must have read my dismay on my face. "Hey, I'm a Were," he said, shrugging. "I'd do it if I had to. Especially at the right time of the moon."
"So maybe a fellow pack member did him in, for reasons we don't know, and decided to lay the blame on you?" Another possible scenario.
"That doesn't feel right. Another Were would have—well, the body would've looked different." Alcide said, trying to spare my finer feelings. He meant the body would have been ripped to shreds. "And I think I would've smelled another Were on him. Not that I got that close."
We just didn't have any other ideas, though if I'd tape-recorded that conversation and played it back, I would have thought of another possible culprit easily enough.
Alcide said he had to get back to Shreveport, and I lifted my legs for him to rise. He got up, but went down on one knee by the head of the couch to tell me goodbye. I said the polite things, how nice it had been of him to give me a place to stay, how much I'd enjoyed meeting his sister, how much fun it had been to hide a body with him. No, I didn't really say that, but it crossed my mind, as I was being Gran's courteous product.
"I'm glad I met you," he said. He was closer to me than I'd thought, and he gave me a peck on the lips in farewell. But after the peck, which was okay, he returned for a longer good-bye. His lips felt
so warm; and after a second, his tongue felt even warmer. His head turned slightly to get a better angle, and then he went at it again. His right hand hovered above me, trying to find a place to settle that wouldn't hurt me. Finally he covered my left hand with his. Oh boy, this was good. But only my mouth and my lower pelvis were happy. The rest of me hurt. His hand slid, in a questioning sort of way, up to my breast, and I gave a sharp gasp.
"Oh, God, I hurt you!" he said. His lips looked very full and red after the long kiss, and his eyes were brilliant.
I felt obliged to apologize. "I'm just so sore," I said.
"What did they do to you?" he asked. "Not just a few slaps across the face?"
He had imagined my swollen face was my most serious problem.
"I wish that had been it," I said, trying to smile.
He truly looked stricken. "And here I am, making a pass at you."
"Well, I didn't push you away," I said mildly. (I was too sore to push.) "And I didn't say, 'No, sir, how dare you force your attentions on me!'"
Alcide looked somewhat startled. "I'll come back by soon," he promised. "If you need anything, you call me." He fished a card out of his pocket and laid it on the table by the couch. "This has got my work number on it, and I'm writing my cell number on the back, and my home number. Give me yours." Obediently, I recited the numbers to him, and he wrote them down in, no kidding, a little black book. I didn't have the energy to make a joke.
When he was gone, the house felt extra empty. He was so big and so energetic—so alive—he filled large spaces with his personality and presence.
It was a day for me to sigh.
Having talked to Jason at Merlotte's, Arlene came by at half past five. She surveyed me, looked as if she were suppressing a lot of comments she really wanted to make, and heated me up some Campbell's. I let it cool before I ate it very carefully and slowly, and felt the better for it. She put the dishes in the dishwasher, and asked me if I needed any other help. I thought of her children waiting for her at home, and I said I was just fine. It did me good to see Arlene, and to know she was struggling with herself about speaking out of turn made me feel even better.
Physically, I was feeling more and more stiff. I made myself get up and walk a little (though it looked more like a hobble), but as my bruises became fully developed and the house grew colder, I
began to feel much worse. This was when living alone really got to you, when you felt bad or sick and there was no one there.
You might feel a little sorry for yourself, too, if you weren't careful.
To my surprise, the first vampire to arrive after dark was Pam. Tonight she was wearing a trailing black gown, so she was scheduled to work at Fangtasia. Ordinarily, Pam shunned black; she was a pastels kind of female. She yanked at the chiffon sleeves impatiently.
"Eric says you may need a female to help you," she said impatiently. "Though why I am supposed to be your lady's maid, I don't know. Do you really need help, or is he just trying to curry favor with you? I like you well enough, but after all, I am vampire, and you are human."
That Pam, what a sweetie.
"You could sit and visit with me for a minute," I suggested, at a loss as to how to proceed. Actually, it would be nice to have help getting into and out of the bathtub, but I knew Pam would be offended to be asked to perform such a personal task. After all, she was vampire, I was human … .
Pam settled into the armchair facing the couch. "Eric says you can fire a shotgun," she said, more conversationally. "Would you teach me?"
"I'd be real glad to, when I'm better."
"Did you really stake Lorena?"
The shotgun lessons were more important than the death of Lorena, it seemed.
"Yes. She would've killed me."
"How'd you do it?"
"I had the stake that had been used on me."
Then Pam had to hear about that, and ask me how it felt, since I was the only person she knew who'd survived being staked, and then she asked me exactly how I'd killed Lorena, and there we were, back at my least favorite topic.
"I don't want to talk about it," I admitted.
"Why not?" Pam was curious. "You say she was trying to kill you."
"She was."
"And after she had done that, she would have tortured Bill more, until he broke, and you would have been dead, and it all would have been for nothing."
Pam had a point, a good one, and I tried to think about it as a practical step to have taken, rather than a desperate reflex.
"Bill and Eric will be here soon," Pam said, looking at her watch.
"I wish you had told me that earlier," I said, struggling to my feet.
"Got to brush your teeth and hair?" Pam was cheerfully sarcastic. "That's why Eric thought you might need my help."
"I think I can manage my own grooming, if you wouldn't mind heating up some blood in the microwave—of course, for yourself as well. I'm sorry, I wasn't being polite."
Pam gave me a skeptical look, but trotted off to the kitchen without further comment. I listened for a minute to make sure she knew how to operate a microwave, and I heard reassuringly unhesitating beeps as she punched in the numbers and hit Start.
Slowly and painfully, I washed off in the sink, brushed my hair and teeth, and put on some silky pink pajamas and a matching robe and slippers. I wished I had the energy to dress, but I just couldn't face underwear and socks and shoes.
There was no point putting on makeup over the bruises. There was no way I could cover them. In fact, I wondered why I'd gotten up from the couch to put myself through this much pain. I looked in the mirror and told myself I was an idiot to make any preparation for their arrival. I was just plain primping. Given my overall misery (mental and physical), my behavior was ridiculous. I was sorry I had felt the impulse, and even sorrier Pam had witnessed it.
But the first male caller I had was Bubba.
He was all decked out. The vampires of Jackson had enjoyed Bubba's company, it was apparent. Bubba was wearing a red jumpsuit with rhinestones on it (I wasn't too surprised one of the boy toys at the mansion had had one) complete with wide belt and half boots. Bubba looked good.
He didn't seem pleased, though. He seemed apologetic. "Miss Sookie, I'm sorry I lost you last night," he said right away. He brushed past Pam, who looked surprised. "I see something awful happened to you last night, and I wasn't there to stop it like Eric told me to be. I was having a good time in Jackson, those guys there really know how to throw themselves a party."
I had an idea, a blindingly simple idea. If I'd been in a comic strip, it would have shown itself as a lightning bolt over my head. "You've been watching me every night," I said, as gently as I could, trying hard to keep all excitement out of my voice. "Right?"
"Yes'm, ever since Mr. Eric told me to." He was standing straighter, his head full of carefully combed hair gelled into the familiar style. The guys at Russell's mansion had really worked hard on him.
"So you were out there the night we came back from the club? The first night?"
"You bet, Miss Sookie."
"Did you see anyone else outside the apartment?"
"I sure did." He looked proud.
Oh, boy. "Was this a guy in gang leathers?"
He looked surprised. "Yes'm, it was that guy hurt you in the bar. I seen him when the doorman threw him out back. Some of his buddies came around back there, and they were talking about what had happened. So I knew he'd offended you. Mr. Eric said not to come up to you or him in public, so I didn't. But I followed you back to the apartment, in that truck. Bet you didn't even know I was in the back."
"No, I sure didn't know you were in the back of the pickup. That was real smart. Now tell me, when you saw the Were later, what was he doing?"
"He had picked the lock on the apartment door by the time I snuck up behind him. I just barely caught that sucker in time."
"What did you do with him?" I smiled at Bubba.
"I broke his neck and stuffed him in the closet," Bubba said proudly. "I didn't have time to take the body anywhere, and I figured you and Mr. Eric could figure out what to do about it."
I had to look away. So simple. So direct. Solving that mystery had just taken asking the right person the right question.
Why hadn't we thought of it? You couldn't give Bubba orders and expect him to adapt them to circumstances. Quite possibly, he had saved my life by killing Jerry Falcon, since my bedroom was
the first one the Were would have come to. I had been so tired when I finally got to bed, I might not have woken until it was too late.
Pam had been looking back and forth between us with a question on her face. I held up a hand to indicate I'd explain later, and I made myself smile at Bubba and tell him he'd done the right thing. "Eric will be so pleased," I said. And telling Alcide would be an interesting experience.
Bubba's whole face relaxed. He smiled, that upper lip curling just a little. "I'm glad to hear you say so," he said. "You got any blood? I'm mighty thirsty."
"Sure," I said. Pam was thoughtful enough to fetch the blood, and Bubba took a big swig.
"Not as good as a cat's," he observed. "But mighty fine just the same. Thank you, thank you very much."
Chapter Fifteen
What a cozy evening it was turning out to be—yours truly and four vampires, after Bill and Eric arrived separately but almost simultaneously. Just me and my buds, hanging at the house.
Bill insisted on braiding my hair for me, just so he could show his familiarity with my house and habits by going in the bathroom and getting my box of hair doodads. Then he put me on the ottoman in front of him as he sat behind me to brush and fix my hair. I have always found this a very soothing process, and it aroused memories of another evening Bill and I had begun just about the same way, with a fabulous finale. Of course. Bill was well aware he was pushing those memories to the fore.
Eric observed this with the air of one taking notes, and Pam sneered openly. I could not for the life of me understand why they all had to be here at the same time, and why they all didn't get sick of one another—and me—and go away. After a few minutes of having a comparative crowd in my house, I longed to be alone once more. Why had I thought I was lonely?
Bubba left fairly quickly, anxious to do some hunting. I didn't want to think too closely about that. When he'd left, I was able to tell the other vampires about what had really happened to Jerry Falcon.
Eric didn't seem too upset that his directions to Bubba had caused the death of Jerry Falcon, and I'd already admitted to myself that I couldn't be too wrought up about it, either. If it came down to him, or me, well, I liked me better. Bill was indifferent to Jerry's fate, and Pam thought the whole thing was funny.
"That he followed you to Jackson, when his instructions were just for here, for one night … that he kept following his instructions, no matter what! It's not very vampiric, but he's certainly a good soldier."
"It would have been much better if he'd told Sookie what he'd done and why he'd done it," Eric observed.
"Yes, a note would have been nice," I said sarcastically. "Anything would have been better than opening that closet and finding the body stuffed in there."
Pam hooted with laughter. I'd really found the way to tickle her funny bone. Wonderful.
"I can just see your face," she said. "You and the Were had to hide the body? That's priceless."
"I wish I'd known all this when Alcide was here today," I said. I'd closed my eyes when the full effect of the hair brushing had soothed me. But the sudden silence was delightful. At last, I was getting to amuse my own self a little bit.
Eric said, "Alcide Herveaux came here?"
"Yeah, he brought my bag. He stayed to help me out, seeing as how I'm banged up."
When I opened my eyes, because Bill had quit brushing, I caught Pam's eyes. She winked at me. I gave her a tiny smile.
"I unpacked your bag for you, Sookie," Pam said smoothly. "Where did you get that beautiful velvet shawl-thing?"
I pressed my lips together firmly. "Well, my first evening wrap got ruined at Club—I mean, at Josephine's. Alcide very kindly went shopping and bought it to surprise me … he said he felt responsible for the first one getting burned." I was delighted I'd carried it up to the apartment from its place on the front seat of the Lincoln. I didn't remember doing that.
"He has excellent taste, for a Were," Pam conceded. "If I borrow your red dress, can I borrow the shawl, too?"
I hadn't known Pam and I were on clothes-swapping terms. She was definitely up to mischief. "Sure," I said.
Shortly after that, Pam said she was leaving. "I think I'll run home through the woods," she said. "I feel like experiencing the night."
"You'll run all the way back to Shreveport?" I said, astonished.
"It won't be the first time," she said. "Oh, by the way, Bill, the queen called Fangtasia this evening to find out why you are late with her little job. She had been unable to reach you at your home for several nights, she said."
Bill resumed brushing my hair. "I will call her back later," he said. "From my place. She'll be glad to hear that I've completed it."
"You nearly lost everything," Eric said, his sudden outburst startling everyone in the room.
Pam slipped out the front door after she'd looked from Eric to Bill. That kind of scared me.
"Yes, I'm well aware of that," Bill said. His voice, always cool and sweet, was absolutely frigid. Eric, on the other hand, tended toward the fiery.
"You were a fool to take up with that she-demon again," Eric said.
"Hey, guys, I'm sitting right here," I said.
They both glared at me. They seemed determined to finish this quarrel, and I figured I would leave them to go at it. Once they were outside. I hadn't thanked Eric for the driveway yet, and I wanted to, but tonight was maybe not the time.
"Okay," I said. "I'd hoped to avoid this, but … Bill, I rescind your invitation into my house." Bill began walking backward to the door, a helpless look on his face, and my brush still in his hand. Eric grinned at him triumphantly. "Eric," I said, and his smile faded. "I rescind your invitation into my house." And backward he went, out my door and off my porch. The door slammed shut behind (or maybe in front of?) them.
I sat on the ottoman, feeling relief beyond words at the sudden silence. And all of a sudden, I realized that the computer program so desired by the queen of Louisiana, the computer program that had cost lives and the ruin of my relationship with Bill, was in my house … which not Eric, or Bill, or even the queen, could enter without my say-so.
I hadn't laughed so hard in weeks.